The Catastrophe

The Catastrophe

 

------PROTASIS------

 

The ease in any lie, the smirk in any sigh,

The smile that does not last,

 

The trick in any eye

 

The ego in the goal, the rat inside the hole,

The smile that does not last,

 

The cancer in the mole

 

The touch that does not soothe,

The word that does not move,

The smile that does not last,

 

The love we cannot prove.[1]

 

------EPITASIS------

 

All things are dust and only dust,

And dust is made of things that turn to dust,

As all things must, like hearts with feathered wings

 

They cannot be what dust is not,

Nor more than love can be

A thing they lower into dust

But only mourners see.

 

------CATASTROPHE------

 

I know not where

This star will lead;

 

I would not chance the night

I would not be a fool that did

 

I am a child of light!

 

But I suppose it must be so:

To finish, I must start

 

And only darkness rounds a star

That bids a pilgrim heart.[2]

---

[1] Playing off Hamlet’s “dram of evil” speech (ACT I Scene 4), the poet suggests that physical reality is corrupt and ultimately destructive. As a pilgrim heart, this caused him to be disheartened. However, his despair was unmanageable only when it was coupled with the enormity of death and the terrible feelings of isolation it engendered. He speaks indirectly to this issue in Camille Du Monde’s entry on Page 242. Here, it serves as the theme of his poetic medley. The “catastrophe” is that some men (him) seem to have no choice but to follow a star surrounded by darkness. The structure of this poem (protasis, epitasis, and catastrophe) is borrowed from the fourth-century Roman grammarian, Aelius Donatus.

 

[2] Paris believed that some people achieve divine favor simply by correctly living out their intuitive understanding of the logos, while never actually thinking about their relationship to eternity or fussing too much over complicated philosophical matters. Therefore, to be born a sensitive, epistemological thinker, a pilgrim heart, is an unnecessary “catastrophe.” But again, the poet did not think that such individuals were typically Christians who were devout in their beliefs. Indeed, he considered the nineteenth-century German nihilist, Friedrich Nietzsche, to be a prime example of the pilgrim heart.