Visions in the Water

I sat on the banks of a sea where many laid before,
The wind and the water danced, like lovers at heart,
The rays of sun separated, shattered on the waves,
Like shards of glass - once a whole - now apart.

Across the water, mountains, monuments of man,
Towering masses of concrete, metal and bricks,
Projects of immortality, to outlast time itself,
Yet, like all - today, a whole - tomorrow, apart.

I eye my visage staring in the water - she wonders: 
What makes us us, what shapes the we and the I?
At once animals, at twice wardens of the earth,
Gods of creation? or Lords of destruction gone awry?

Besides me, a tree trunk, twisted, tangled, torpid,
Long dead, yet bursting at the seams with life of all,
Of bugs and beetles, of moss and lichen,
Alive as one - once apart - now a whole.

I think myself that tree, part of a whole, none of a part,
A being without a core, a creature without essence,
If but a mosaic of every soul I’ve met, loved, and lost,
Of every book I’ve read, of every story I’ve been told.

And so, I extend my hand, not to guide, but to journey,
Through the anarchic halls of art, myth, and culture,
For truth, if it may exist, lies not in the leaves of books,
But in the unspoken, where meaning ventures to persist.

In this edition you will find wholes and parts,
Stories of creation, of culture and of the arts,
Tales of music and sports, of truth and of fiction
In them, immortality of the soul - freedom from affliction.

Or, in the words of that Grecian urn long dead:
“Beauty is truth, truth, beauty,”
And that truly is all, that can ever be said. 

The author is I, the editor of this mag’s content,
I like books and poetry, song and dance,
And if there be a beast as authorial intent,
Then I must apologise duly in advance, 
For some things cannot be translated wholly unbent
But do give the Finnish version a chance :)

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