Wednesday, September 24, 2003
 

All we have gained the machine threatens, so long
as it makes bold to exist in the spirit instead of obeying.
Lest the lovelier lingering of the glorious hand longer invite us,
for the more resolute building starker it cuts the stone.

It nowhere stays behind so that we might just once escape it
and oiling in the silent factory it would belong to itself.
It is life, -- thinks it knows best,
that with equal resolve arrays, produces, destroys.

But to us existence is still enchanted; at a hundred
points it is origin still. A playing of pure
forces that no one touches who does not kneel and marvel.

Words still gently fade before the unsayable . . .
And music, ever new, out of the most tremulous stones
builds in unusable space her deified house.

(Rilke, Part II, sonnet 10, Sonnets to Orpheus)

Elvisette philosophized at 10:16 PM