Presence, Holiness And Non-Thinking Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

One of the wolves chases the sun

The other wolf chases the moon

And they wait at dawn and dusk

On their mountain peaks above

The abyss to join the helter-skelter.



And day by day and night by night

They will break and scramble headlong -

The one tracking the golden disc of light,

That is the basis of understanding,

The other the silver torc of mystery.



Which wolf has the greater substance -

The gold, which is aware-has presence,

Or the white which is immanent - perhaps holy?

And come the dawn and evening-tide

What is to be shared in their anticipation?



Doubtless in their dreams, the mystic wolves

Will rerun chases through clouds and storms,

Picking up the scents of tracks part-foregone,

Seeking out the sky-trails of fugitive thoughts,

Marking to memory, the sublime and transcendent.



What can be said of those that chase reason

And those that chase after belief and dreams?

As with the wolves, there will be no reconciliation -

There is no ending to the chase for certainty.


Let us listen then when each hunt goes quiet.



"The thinker utters Being. The poet names what is Holy..... The poet and the thinker dwell near to one another on mountains farthest apart.", What is Metaphysics? , Martin Heidegger

"The nearness that brings poetry and thinking together into neighbourhood we call ‘Saying'. 'To say, ' which is related to the Old Norse 'saga, ' means to show: to make appear, set free.", The Nature of Languages, Martin Heidegger

"To be a poet in a destitute time means: to attend, singing, to the trace of the fugitive gods. This is why the poet in the time of the world's night utters the holy", Martin Heidegger on 'Bread and Wine, by Friedrich Holderlin.



The steady rain has set in again -

Across the valley the mists rise

There is a path that leads down

But I can no longer discern it.



The hut's laths and sills are sodden

The door frame grates the jambs

The roof shrugs off its waterlogging:

I will stay still and likewise settle.



This rain, so endless, so beautiful

That becomes the threshold of my life -

Thinking and belief set aside

There is nothing more delightful.