Insistence

I still speak to you, yet perhaps it is you
Who speak now through the turmoil I walk through.
What I say here is no longer wholly mine;
It seeks another flesh, another future line.

The distant voice of Hot Blood resounds in echo
To that of the watcher… What sane soul could believe
In such a wild possibility…
“The world is not a stable given, thinks Hot Blood,
It is what opens in the event,
What takes form within existence
When it is struck, surprised, displaced.
Insistence is precisely what opposes this opening:
It is a presence without play,
A presence that no longer knows how to be silent.
The world insists when it no longer welcomes man,
But holds him. It does not call him: it keeps him.”

I have seen too many splendid promises sink,
Proud masts shatter beneath treacherous skies;
I have seen false suns of crimson tents
Shine upon wreckage blinded by their light.

I was there. I believed. I burned my strength, my voice.
I sang into the wind, walked without a roof.
And when the hull gave way to laughter and excess,
I learned that a cry is worth less than precision.

Then I fell silent. I stood upright
On a bare rock, battered by a godless sea.

Is silence knowledge, or merely sparing yourself?
I flee from falsehood, not from harshness.

But tell me: is your silence still alive,
Or merely a rampart raised against the wind?
You watch those fall who still dare to risk:
They bleed; you stand—but what do you uphold?

For the circus is vain, yes—grotesque and loud—
Yet it dares the fire, the surge, the beating heart.
It dies a thousand clumsy deaths, but lives a thousand lives.
You no longer fail—but do you walk, tell me?

“I will no longer lie to the desire that blinds me.”
— “And I fear a heart grown far too calm.”
“I refuse to serve masks and dread.”
— “And I fear a sage stripped of all trembling.”

Enough!
For you are both right, and both mistaken.
Neither shoreless rapture nor trembling pride
Unstirred by the fire of the living
Will make this world a place more firm.

I am not the circus, nor am I stone.
I am vigilance and passage, threshold and flame.
I climb no more, drunk, aboard broken ships,
But I do not vow eternal clarity.

Let me choose the moment, not the flight.
Let me enter just before the uncertain sequence.
I ask for steady fires, not boastful blazes;
For risks consented, not flattering dreams.

I will remain here as long as the hour commands,
Not from fear of leaving nor scorn of crowns,
But so that, when I go, it will be wide awake,
Without believing that the sea must fall silent.

And if the circus collapses, let it fall in its own way.
I will not laugh falsely, nor flee the open sky.
I will sometimes walk, often keep watch—
A humble donkey, yet still alive.