To those who argue for or subscribe to the philosophy of universal balance
that preaches “for every negative a positive, and vice-versa”
such that good things and bad things follow one another and ultimately cancel out,
I have a pinching question
for an internal debt has been growing slowly with each change
and I have not by myself been able to resolve it
thus, I ask:
is there not a sadness ineradicable that lives through all endeavour and hope,
despite all endeavour and hope
which fresh endeavour and revived hope never annihilate
only temporarily survive, then by which consumed, once again
no matter how articulate or vivid the promise of a Future
or how widely the children might be awoken to a new time
or how near or distant, audaciously or austerely, the parameters of paradise be set?
thus, is there not rather this understated melancholy so necessary and clear that it need not be said ever because it is already said always
said by a default mourning
every morning
there in the feeling that knows the difference between
gaining something and losing something
the irreplaceability of something, the absolute individuality of all things
that replacing one thing with another is not replacing it, at all
but trying to forget it,
to kill or postpone its memory with the presence of something else
as the day today does not replace the day yesterday
it is here instead
and all days are in their own way
once done, lost forever
tomorrow will come and be lost its own way too
and nothing will be able to replace it, just as it never replaced anything, either
the new only takes the place of the old and that is felt
the absence of the old is not covered or forgotten by the presence of the new
but is quietly mourned through the experience of the difference itself
as if the only real difference between a morning and mourning were a spelling mistake
fundamentally, are they not the same event?
to the philosophers of great balance, I turn and posit this
is not the miracle of birth still no consolation for the senselessness of death?
thus, is there not this residue in us that accrues like a debt
and no future able to satisfy
without adding to it when its place later taken, too
in the eternal return to the Negative?