Energy

 

"Energy is eternal delight" ~William Blake

If your revolution does not begin by drowning in the ocean of delight, who will you liberate, and from what?

If your neurons are not rivers of flame springing from wounds of delight, what use is thinking and believing?

If your heart is not a tavern where chalices of wonder pour stars and planets back and forth to bring out their delightful bouquet, what teachings can you offer?

You claim that sorrow makes you wise, but does your shadow not consist of pulverized suns, infinitesimal charmed and crazy quarks of joy?

Do not speak until every particle of your tongue is Shivananda-Lahari, a wave of Shiva-bliss.

Don't march for Peace, or pontificate for Justice, until your steps leave no footprints, and you dance with a furious delight that granulates your bones into rosaries of coral, churns your tears into the buttery spawn of a new rainbow species, glitters your body in a black chrism distilled from the hopeless bling of midnight. For delight is the flowering of Presence, with no need of hope.

Listen friend: the soil, the leaves, the petals of camellia that blossom in December, the elegant downy mold blooming on the compost heap, the hard-bitten nipple in the baby's lips, the mother's teardrop; the scales of useless memory crusting the eyes of the dying, the stained yellow remnants taken out to be burned, the hollow of the mouth about to say farewell, but cannot; the buried dream-seed dreaming green wings that fly up through the loam to touch a golden ray, yet waiting and dreaming in darkness...

This fantasy of dust, very dust, kneaded and risen and twice-born, yeasted with your breath, gifted with your grace, every mote of your body a tremor of delight.


Engraving by William Blake