Never~Beginnings and Always~Forevers

“All goes onward and outward….

          And nothing collapses....”

Initially, the originator portrays the motif of never~beginnings and always~forevers through a birth and death vehicle. These two are especially appropriate data for such an argument primarily due to their infinite nature and the vast unknownness surrounding their existence. Essentially, modern day philosophy tends to view the two as inversions, binaries of a sort, even opposites. The significance of this is, if one will, each point becomes a vector on a graph, each extends opposite ways infinitely. The idea here being there are no beginnings; never anything begins, always everything changes, forever. Existence, Matter, Souls, Selfs- each of these become an ever~always process, an on-going transformation.

“Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?

                 I hasten to inform him or her it is

                            Just as lucky to die, and I know it.”

Death, is presumptuously, just as much a process as living, it is the final separation of soul from this body. Living becomes intertwining of body and soul, yet their separation is not their end. The body evolves into nature, into ash, into dirt or dust, the soul becomes matter-less~ relieving itself from substance. Throughout the poem, natural imagery is evoked, images of the transforming essence of nature; the very essence which the poem seeks to replicate through its natural flow, this natural flow which runs parallel to birth and death. There is a luckiness to inceptions, there is no fear to birth,  there is a type of mastery over the forever extending beyond and before this life, and this very lack of fear tends to evoke surprise in a modern day reader. How could one fear death and not equally fear birth? If to be born is lucky, is to die not equally lucky? If both extend infinitely, if both reach beyond the realm of time, clearly there is nothing to fear in either direction, there is only celebration- a mere infinite process, an on-going and always-forever perfection.

“Swiftly arose and spread around me

            The peace and joy and knowledge

            That pass all the art and argument

of the earth;

And I know that the hand of God is

The eldest brother of my own,

And that all the men ever born are

Also my brothers…. And the

Women are sisters and lovers…”

Birth becomes the infusion point of the soul and body, where the soul flows in and gives spirit organs, solidified minds, mass. Each form, the solid and the essence, are only a lasting transformation... Here, the originator dabbles into what is otherwise referred to as perfection; a perfection dwindling back and forth between a temporal state of non-existence. Because there is never a start, nor an end, there is only forever, a forever which must be perfect. Here we find birth, yet birth vastly divergent from the continuing motif depicted before. The originator seeks to interrelate everything from a perfect god to perfect women to perfect men. He states this relatively, of course, as a human's soul lands on this planet one becomes interwoven with the living, interwoven beyond existence.

“We have thus far exhausted trillions

          Of winters and summers;

          There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them

Births have brought us richness and variety,

         And other births will bring us richness and variety.

I do not call one greater and one smaller,

        That which fills its period and place is equal to any.”

Birth and death extend beyond what is considered living, beyond what is present, what is us; it extends to breathing entities such as planets, such as seasons. Here the originator proclaims seasons reach to trillions, yet he refrains from naming them infinite. Here is where I find a flaw in the philosophical and theoretical essence of this version of the poem; because our souls essentially reach and extend to infinite, does this not also require a seasonal infinite? If a soul, just as an idea, just as an essence, just as a fragment of matter, just as a quaint, extends infinitely in either direction on a vector of time, would not seasons become infinite as well? It stands to logic a must. While the poet does not counter this, he refers to seasons as trillions and trillions, not merely always-forevers. Placing a time limit on seasons essentially counters this idea of always~forevers, for trillions upon trillions of years, in terms of a time scale, end (at least worded in such a manner). Granted, this stance is not solidified at this point of the poem, it is, however, unclear. For trillions of years with trillions of years following could get repeated forever, he simply restrains from saying so. This is probably to provide the reader with awe at the length with which seasons have existed and will exist. A trillion plus a trillion plus a trillion *repeat* imagine how far that extends!