Crossing the unfeeling surface of this
                        ugly city,
lost in broken reveries &
                        the sophistry
of melancholy without origin,

thought begins
to blend into visceral abstraction:

the nausea of a simple creature
wanting only to know why it knows it
                        must suffer.

Wouldn’t it be better
not to think at all,
    to be
        
innocent & free

from the thoughts that follow
    the hollow feeling
        that everything

is meaningless?

                        …but meaning is a concept,

one of thought’s
        many children,
so without thought
            there would be no concept
                of meaning to be lost…

through a clumsy succession of steps I
                        try to accept
that the words bring this suffering & yet
are the only source of my salvation:

no affirmation without negation;

                        nothing is something,
            & something
                is nothing
without opposition…

this is what brings me back to a fleeting
            consolation,
        my one broken prize;
a thought
        that isn’t mine:

the tree is really rooted in the sky*;
    it is the light
falling continually from above
that provides
        the energy
needed
    to defy gravity,

by finding it’s way upwards while
sending roots
    deep into
        the earth.

* Human Personality – Simone Weil