Of Death And Birth: Fire And The Rose

'We die with the dying:
 See, they depart and we go with them.  
 We are born with the dead:  
 See, they return, and bring us with them.'  
                    -T. S. Elliot  
   
I  
The way of ignorance is the way home:  
Go, go! Folly is the only way;  
knowledge is the unlearning of itself.  
Do not try harder, try less;  
this is the only way, the unpropitious one.  
   
(Love is the only lesson that can't be learned.)  
   
The Sky and The Earth agree:    
I end where I began,  
the way there known only by my feet,  
not mind nor hands.  
   
II  
In warm Autumn, a rose still blooming  
knows not its fate, cares not;  
it feels the dust on its petals    
when the wind ceases:  
There is no deception in its perfume.  
   
(The sweet is the acrid and one reforms the other.)  
   
Humankind bears its only separation;  
there is none that eludes timelessness.  
We are the sole keepers of time  
which persists unconquered;  
its origin remains a rose aflame.  
   
III  
Where past meets future worries cease  
and time, the old time awakens;  
old time is not our time, the time of  
a world atwitter.  
   
The timing of death and birth are momentary,  
but live in every moment we live and do not die  
when we die; they supersede us:  
They cannot be embodied at the same time  
although they are one and the same,  
being each the penultimate experience.  
   
IV  
In what season does the rose dry silently,  
awaiting autumnal darkness    
with its own faint hebetude,  
a dormant inner Spring inhabiting    
its branches in motionless fervor.  
   
(The season of the rose in bloom is every season,  
as such is the season of the flame, for the two    
are each to the other betokeneth.)  
   
The Sun requires The Moon to bear this matrimony;  
together they dance around the immaterial light  
by which their very existence depends.  
   
         .....