I am personalistic
Since I can’t or won’t call myself a humanist
That old term rotten and misbegotten
For as a species homo sapiens is no more respectable
Than felis domesticus or lumbricus terrestris
And if anything I feel almost contempt for the human
And more than compassion
But
Perfection is not granted unto humans
And who would do the granting
So much simpler to say
Perfection is not a thing
And why bother with a no-thing
We have reason to act and feel in certain ways
And we have reason yes
For certain omissions forbearances and demurrals
And why
For although it is true as Parfit says that
We are the animals that can both understand and respond to reasons
The animal part of us obstructs the reasoning part
The violence the cowardice the torpor the callousness the longing for death
Stunting our growth and impeding our mental voyages
But
The mere potential for such understanding and such response
Makes persons respectable
Even if the term personalist is not a word
Or if it is it is raw unwashed and partially digested
So we have not yet discovered the word
For the truth that all persons ought to respect
And indeed appreciate celebrate and applaud
The capacity for reason
But
So much more than just reason also for
Error and the correction of error
Error has cause and we can judge cause
Ignorance and the will to learn
Ignorance has cause
Disgust and the development of taste
Disgust has cause
Rage and the cultivation of patience
Rage has cause
Apathy and the exaltation of energy
Apathy has cause
We can take action and assume certain attitudes
Creativity empathy compassion kindness and love
Not just for a species
And not just for the privilege of having evolved into consciousness
But
For the universe in all its parts
But
The universe is not composed of parts
And for things
Feeble metaphor things
Beyond the universe of space and time
Like math facts and moral being
But
What a miracle or a perplexity
What a signal insight or a rookie error
That a particle much less than a nanoparticle
A negligible dimensionless point
A duration of unthinkable brevity
Should possess consciousness
Should possess the capacity to respond to reasons
For everything is connected
Everything that falls
Everything that rises again
The universal metabolism of falling and rising
Feeble metaphor connected
But
Here words fail me as they have failed all
Who have tried to put this truth into words
Though poets have come closest
The poets and the mystics
Mystics who have experienced their way past
And poets who can sing their way past
The mythological Person of God and past
The limitations of the merely human
The merely organic
Wordsworth’s we see into the life of things
But
Life is a feeble metaphor
And see a feeble metaphor
And Coleridge’s nobly feeble attempt
Which Wordsworth perhaps imitated
The one life within us and abroad
And Blake’s seeing albeit feeble seeing
A World in a grain of sand
And my metaphor cliched and contemptibly feeble
Of connection
Feeble resort to naming and personifying
Atman or pantheos
But
The mystery and delicacy of difference
Of distinction uniqueness individuality
And Oh The difference to me
The exquisitely particular truth of one Black life
The universal general truth of Baldwin’s
Tale of how we suffer
And how we are delighted
And how we may triumph
Never new but always to be heard
And how do you put into words
The weathered grain of an ancient door post
The dissonant chord in the Adagio for Strings
Amid so much sonority
The infant cry of fear
At the sight of the plume upon Hector’s helmet
The nakedness of Lear
The nudity of Josephine Baker
The outrageous costume of the reveler in Brazil
The bass line in Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag
Django‘s rendition of St. Louis Blues
Bessie Smith’s rendition of St. Louis Blues
A German Requiem
The second movement of the Seventh
Exile on Main Street and Sgt Pepper and The Dark Side of the Moon
And Live at the Apollo and Kind of Blue
And Highway 61 by Bob Dylan
And Modern Times by Bob Dylan
And Modern Times by Charles Chaplin
And how do you put into words
The artistry of words
Four bracing words of Martial
And Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards
But on the viewless wings of poesy
And the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie
And how do you put into words
The Sistine Chapel which I’ve never seen
Don Quixote which I’ve never read
The Russian mushroom which I have never tasted
The caves of Lascaux which I’ve never entered
The songs of olden times which I will never hear
Which nobody will ever hear
And how do you put into words
A solitary star
A flock of red-winged blackbirds
The miracle of a single breath
The taste of lime in a glass of iced tea
The fullness of my lover’s breast
Or anybody’s delight
Anybody’s sorrow
The universe is large
But
We’re not talking about size
And probably one of many
But
We’re not talking about number
But
The value of a person
Of a mockingbird
Of a stone
Of a ray of light from a distant galaxy
Of a priceless work of art
Of a plastic bag disintegrating in a landfill
For we must know of the breaking down as of the building up
And all is value
What we know and what we don’t know
The value of knowledge
Though knowledge does not create value
The value of caring
Though caring does not create value
Value no more created than math facts are created
The value of each dependent inexhaustible person
Of a patient
Of an infant
Of a student
Of a convicted criminal in the purgatory of incarceration
Of persons made to suffer
Of precious moments of delight
Of the holy communion of family and friends
Of things known and unknown
Of things visible and invisible
Of things in space and time and beyond space and time
And there is only one thing
And thing a feeble metaphor
And what is the extent of a thing
The value of a thing
I am a no-thing
A mote and a particle
An immeasurably valuable speck
A transient shell
An ephemeral mask
Unique and irreplaceable
Immense and infinitesimal
Lonely in a crowd
Crowded surrounded with love
Born to die
Mewling and puking here in a public post
Self-worshipping and self-destroying
Enraged at injustice
Privileged with comfort
Knowing everything and nothing
Awake to every sensation
Blind and deaf and numb and asleep
Thank you existence
Feeble metaphor existence
Thank you experience
Feeble metaphor experience
Thank you somebody something
Thank you