The Procession of Rebellion

We get back only what we give,
only the measure of what we do.
Even knowing, even understanding it all,
we still receive the same old answer,
because we repeat the same old deed.

Where uncertain journeys risk their way,
where the agony of becoming waits,
where marches of rebellion throng
in bone and marrow—
there lies the dream, there lies the change!
And how it costs us to accept this much.

To be born is to suffer
until death...
This is fate.
Beyond this
there is no meaning left to living.

In all of this
some clamor of existence,
some arrival of sorrow...
It keeps seeming
that now, surely, all ends,
that now is the time to flee.

It seems one must lose
in order to possess.
Love lives there,
pain lives there.
Light dwells there,
darkness dwells there.
Twilight blooms there,
war blooms there.

From beginning to end
what we do and what we don't—
these two things are truly us.
Everything beyond these,
we are not.

We are only what
we have held on to.
What has left,
what we've let go of,
we are not truly in those things.
To feel
and to think we are feeling—
these are not the same;
love's reckoning is the same too.

Truth is truth, after all.
Those who do well by lies
must one day return
to truth itself.
This return itself is awakening.

Those who don't know why
they do what they do,
and in loving
don't care what they're losing,
don't care what they're abandoning—
these two kinds of people alone
have the comfort of foolishness,
but no prosperity, no peace by any measure.