Last Updated on March 20, 2008
We are sitting in front of a fire; outside, ice covers the trees; snow has fallen. In days past, white was the color of purity; but then minds greater than poetry analyzed such metaphors and determined that white was not a color at all, but the absence of color; that black was the collection of all color; and so white lost its stature and meaning; purity was lost; angels fell from their pedestals, and no one could speak of snow, purity, covered trees or angels flying through the air from clouds casting dark shadows and snowflakes with designs carved from the mind of God.
No, poetry was never to encounter the rational; mathematics was poetry for those who sought certainty in a world of certitudes lost in the beauty of words; but then the fallen nature of man came to mold beauty in the mirror of himself, and from the fallen nature came the hunger for power; and from that hunger for power, beauty was lost forever. White lost its color of purity. Snow no longer fell. God no longer carved each snowflake. Instead, the birth of a juggernaut came to be: science, analytical philosophy, Darwinism, the rise of man, and the loss of poetry. Nietzsche declared, Ecce Homo. Years later, when men lamented the loss of youth, the casting away of innocence, a young boy looked out through a frost-covered window pane and dared to ask, “Is one snowflake different from another?” From that question, poetry was born anew, and angels began to fly with renewed vigor, and God picked up his carving knife and began working again.