nature

Levertov / Dust

A Gift
—
Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
the gift is your answer.
—
–Denise Levertov
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On Greek Spirit, Hegel

The Greek Spirit:

For the Greeks only *watch* the objects of Nature, and form *surmises* respecting them; inquiring, in the depths of their souls, for the hidden meaning. According to Aristotle’s dictum, that Philosophy proceeds from Wonder, the Greek view of Nature also proceeds from wonder of this kind. Not that in their experience, Spirit meets something extraordinary, which it compares with the common order of things; for the intelligent view of a regular course of Nature, and the reference of phenomena to that standard, do not yet present themselves; but the Greek Spirit was excited to wonder at the *Natural* in Nature. It does not maintain the position of stupid indifference to it as something existing, and there an end of it; but regards it as something in the first instance foreign, in which, however, it has a presentiment of confidence, and the belief that it bears something within it which is friendly to the human Spirit, and to which it may be permitted to sustain a positive relation. This *Wonder* and this *Presentiment*, are here the fundamental categories; though the Hellenes did not content themselves with these moods of feelings, but projected the hidden meaning, which was the subject of the surmise, into a distinct conception as an object of consciousness. The Natural holds its place in their minds only after undergoing some transformation by Spirit– not immediately.



~Hegel’s *Philosophy of History*

Pores

The world gets into our pores
and writes on us

lines with the clay of
earth, warmth of sun
bite of wind caress ;

sorrow & joy clog our faces
with our insides, the experience of
our lived Grind:connected.

Existentially, we are slow-born sculptures
that tell of a daring hand
a fiery eye, laced with Power and Love

Why hide it?
you can tell a lot by the face of a man
who hasn’t washed it all away.

c. Kate Gough