The struggle to stay upright
is vast and afflicts us all
with so many imponderables.
Our moral balloon fights in depths and heights
to avoid destruction and the humiliation of the fall
even to the criminal is such that beauty
even to the doubting soul
from moment to moment decides
aloft is best and the desire to stay aloft
continuously abides.
No one falls but absolutely and this
is the mystery of evil—
who really falls absolutely?
Is there not always hope for the soul?
Is the deadline a deadline we can hold in our hand?
Is there help for the helped?
Limiting the infinite is what we finally cannot understand.
How does pleasure pay attention to wisdom ever?
is mysterious, perhaps, but greater by far
is this mystery—
and it resembles the fate afflicting every star—
in the saddest depths there is secret good—
the evil feel this! and so do I
but I feel more and more these days
I may have misunderstood
the truth of limit and the good.
Time really is running out and what soul
would have succumbed and not known
the only buoyant struggle to win
had it not—oh unfathomable!—
managed to ponder if sin is love, love, sin?
or each instant pursue—
through so many mistakes!—
a light, stretching, and distant and covered in blue,
for is it not this moment which is ours at last
because we refused to succumb so many times in the past?