The Cadre 
     
    
   
   
    
     0 Oct. LL page '12 
     
    
   
   
    
     MEDITATIONS I 
     
     The Black Dove 
     
    
   
   
    
     We are a symbol of what we are, We are meaning without form, form with 
     
     outo matter and matter Without meaning. We are thus fragmented by desire and 
     
     by the winds of necessities that we cannot understand. We are a wound without 
     
     healing through which the purpose of the past seeps into the nothingness of the 
     
    
   
   
    
     universe. 
     
    
   
   
    
     \Y/e are like those flowers of affliction that slowly convert the harsh outcrops 
     
     of the landscape with the inevitable humus of their withering. We are like their 
     
     fruit that push roots down to the heartland of the earth that they may bring forth 
     
     mere suffering and life upon the barrenness. But unlike these generations, we 
     
     are not capable of waiting since time cannot be measured save by the slow loss 
     
     of purpose to the void and the slow weakness that grows around us. 
     
    

    
     Each portion of ourselves is a century and we remain dispersed as shards of 
     
     long gone motion, with death in substance and in meaning one. We are thus the 
     
     motionless arrows that inflict upon the guiltless air the eternal violence of our 
     
     passing. We are thus the motion and the steepness of the land’s edge where the 
     
     slippery grasses fall down and down to the tagged union of the cliffs and sea that 
     
     swell up toward our heart. We are the grief of the waves crying against the cliffs 
     
     that mark an end to all we ever knew. We are the coldness of the winds that blow 
     
     the waves toward the darkness of the rocks. We are the harshness of the rocks 
     
     that break the waves like grief. \X/ e are the stillness of the graves that lie in dark- 
     
     ness listening to the ever-growing waves that-beat like death upon the open shore. 
     
     We are the dryness of the rough grass of the open air and the trees scarred with 
     
     the salt of the air, old in agelessness, shaped by the winds of neutrality. 
     
    

    
     We are the black dove of gentleness we fostered in the dark chambers of our 
     
     heart, which cleaves the grey shield of fog; we are its armour of feathers; we are 
     
     its heart, a heart within our own, that beats the slow fragmented strikes of time. 
     
    

    
     We are like the fog, portioned by the stress of storm and made somnolent by 
     
     division, that settles its every part along the shadows of the land where no one 
     
     sees. We are like the sea clouds that look darkly to the world but that seem to ‘ 
     
     glisten from above as though wrought with grey and silver; we are like the deep 
     
     still sky above the ocean of clouds, that is the hemisphere of silence. 
     
    

    
     There is no past; there is only present; we have no memories; we have only 
     
     symbols of what we were. We are the glory of the sacrifice that burns like flame 
     
     along its symmetry of‘path. . 
     
    

    
     We are with light in substance and in meaning one..Each crystal that is trans- 
     
     muted by our light is part of what we are. We are the blindness of the sun that 
     
     melts the ice of winter down to the very roots of the world's centre. . 
     
    

    
     We are like the white rose of magic, confused in the iron and velvet of its ’ 
     
     thorns and petals. \Y’ e have the sharpness of its will to wound. We have its selfish- 
     
     ness and fear and the softness of its self-surrender. Its blind flame is like 
     
     unfound purity that still burns within us. We are the joy of that rose; we are the 
     
     depth of that rose; we are the beauty of that rose. 
     
    

    
     We are like the flakes of snow that although separate form a unity of motion 
     
     from one land to another and from one year to the next. We are like the snow 
     
     that drowns the grass in whiteness; we are like the snow that is poisoned by the 
     
     dark smoke that billows from the forge. We have been the perfection of the 
     
     crested snow that lies along the black rocks of theland; we have been the imper- 
     
     fection of the grass that is dissolved by snow. We have been the permanence \of 
     
     the land and the irnpermanence of the melting ice. We have been the.moon bf 
     
     snow that in other seasons brings continuance of purity an imperfection. We 
     
     have been the light of the moon and the light of the snow that unite the world 
     
     with broken shadows; we have been the'light of the grey-feathered fog that ob- 
     
     scures the sharp flowers of moon-light [in any seasOn. And nothing good or evil 
     
     shall come of these things.