Absurdity is an opaque wall
By the mountains of iron
A raw banality
Of emptiness
Is like a dark red wine
Hanging its faces on the horizon
Unshaped world
Madness and vanity
Bizarre figures
A cruelty in the tainted light
By that strange juice of pride
Which calls forth the armies
That mangle and kill
The helpless sheep
And hammer the hearts
With a strange delight in evil
As great wealth
Was rotting the eyes of the hearts
Of these persons hanging
Onward so
Deeply yet without feeling
Embedded
As a world of their own
Not ever in any form of substance
But merely in rebellion against substance
Eyes, only in horror at such a scene
But bring your mind upward
And throw light
Great light like the steam of a perfect water
By the bay of immaculate love
There is a stone pile
These deep continuing colors
Rolling together
As a moving image which streaks the fair heights
And strikes dear pride with death
Leaving nothing but the moons high hours
As a light born for the soul
Capturing a wave
Of fluttering sights
Is the infinitude of what cannot be seen
This, infinity
Life beyond life
Times beyond times
Gray colors in the dawn
Is what I saw in that beaming light
By the Monastery
In the deep blue light
Of our high middle times
So therein discover our mind
Humble, simple, pure in the light
Of this bright red love
Like waves casting on the sand
Is our grace
A heart without possessions
A blessed life of virtue
Is a fire growing by the night
Which thereby wickedness melts
Lastly, I finish
With a vision of the divine
Of unity and simplicity
As a white sun in the shore
This which is love
Is to be pure love
This, holding all things together
Is a singularity of light.
(Reflections on Augustine, by EB)