A thought is
a logical picture
of a fact.

Wisdom is
the clarity
in which
a thing is
what it is.

Love is
the intensity
with which
we become
ourselves.

The feeling is
a pathetic image
of the act.

Conceptual precision,
                              clarity,
is thought that is revealled
                  as fact

                  just as

emotional precisision,
                              intensity,
is felt as a pressure
                  to act.

* * *

Notes:

Can one be too precise?

Is the philosopher right to reveal thoughts to us that cannot be unthought without perception?

Is the poet right to comcentrate a feeling to a point where the only relief is action?

Must they force us back upon our experiences like that? Must they make us see and do things we would otherwise avoid?

Must they make us suffer thus?

Perhaps everything in language can be suffered. No concept, no emotion, no matter how precise, is insufferable.

The philosopher moves us from confusion to clarity. It is not the fact, but the revelation of the thought, that philosophy gives us.

The poet moves us from langor to intensity. It is not the act, but the pressure of the feeling, that the poet sets before us.

We are now free to suffer it without annihilation.

The desire to let another
in is the hope that they're
simple and calm and their
needs can be satisfied. But

we don't believe it fully.
And we tremble as we slide
the bolt back, perhaps this
time to frustrate the storm.

To challenge your intuitions
you must apply a method.

To challenge our institutions
you must obtain a mandate.

What is the universe
of knowledge really?

What ideal paradise
does our power bring?

After Augustine

All things are done in the body.
We feel them
even when they are not present;
we suffer their images
when we are asleep or angry.

And when we suffer,
do we think our very senses, or
the images of sensible things,
are as they are?
It would not be well.

As When We Are Asleep or Angry

"Democritus held that 'all knowledge is caused by images issuing from the bodies we think of and entering into our souls,' as Augustine says in his letter to Dioscorus (cxviii, 4). And Aristotle says (De Somn. et Vigil.) that Democritus held that knowledge is caused by a 'discharge of images.'" (Aquinas, ST, Q84 A6)

"No ideas but in things." (William Carlos Williams)

"We make ourselves pictures of the facts." (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

I have been looking
for a principle by which
our knowledge of the world
may be presented
to each other, and we
may stand (not fall)
corrected. A style,
if you will. A notation.

It's wrong to think the heart will heal itself
and wrong to think there's something you can do.
No diet, no regimen of exercise, can fix
what love alone has wrought and sundered.

It's wrong to think the mind will rinse itself
of error and the lies it used to soothe
the stings of pride and vanity that broke
its calm complexion, thinking it was wise.

It's wrong to think the soul will reinvest
in this old husk it long had left for dead,
this broken carcass of a body life
will tally with the rest of us in time.

But three wrongs minus one are two
and minus one leaves only one to do.

And what ideas did you expect to come
from all this dicipline, all this order
you've imposed upon your sloth and passion?
What did you think you would accomplish
with a heart your suffering couldn't reach,
a mind aloof to what it could not fathom?

Not a day went by without a line, not an
evening without music, nor a night with
too much wine. Every moment measured against
the sadness that you feared would undermine
the conceptual machinery of your body,
the emotional apparatus of your soul.

Had you only had the courage to give in
to curiosity — the proximity of sin!