THE ABSURDITY OF DESPAIR

Ode #10 - Transcribed Poetic Dictation, Egg-On-Ode

[The pre-dawn hours — the predawn hours! I’ve been noticing much talk of this magical time lately. I can’t remember the last time I received a 4am wake-&-dictate order. Almost all the Odes series have come through the 7-9pm complement to the 3-5am window. Post-sunset eve; simmered dusk. Once upon a time (early Little Cosmic Missives), almost all my poetic dictations came in the early am through interruption of sleep. This gradually shifted to favoring 2am before bed. Then a brief stint of noontidings. Then midnight. Then to the late evening threshold. Now we are revisited with a nostalgic style for me — being woken around 3 or 4am by a voice bequesting a work to me, and not permitting a return to sleep until I complete my transcription. I was sent back under almost immediately upon tapping the last words into my dim-lit phone screen. Cast into dream stupor on the back of an egg — on ice~ ] Received 9/2/2025 | 4:14-29am

Companion Missive #10 - CONTACT IS CONTRACT (6/23-7/3/2023)

Listen to the Recitation:

THE ABSURDITY OF DESPAIR
Impossible is not enough
It must be debilitating, oak
From ox. Demoralize me
Despair is conditioned, while
Mockery is subverted:
Humor cannot be forced
As humility floats on the low
Waters, receding to reveal
Muck flats, stones and rocks
Larger below than they seem
Stuck in silt, though soft
Priable, we kneel in grief before
The enemy hero, kiss his hand
Cedar's veins turn red, the night
Cold to touch — his hand rests
Upon my head. The field is taken
Into the hand of a gracious one
Warbling in delight, the dead son
Returned in piece and part sum
To wheel away what falls apart
While the sun rises once more
In disbelief sent, the chore
Grows heavier, the burden bright
With a hair on the eve and sorrow
Supplanted in day, the marigold
Feeds another butterfly, the two
Cycloning about each other
Along a lifting wind.

When it sets, it does not set;
When it lifts, it does not lift;
When it falls, it does not fall; and
When it rises, it does not raise.

This moment does not last —
It will soon break.

An egg on ice

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Marie Spartali Stillman, The Pilgrim Folk (1914); Dante tells news of Beatrice’s passing to passerby pilgrims — the black birds process

Another great Stillman — The Enchanted Garden (1889) — Ansaldo achieves Dianora’s impossible request for a flowering garden in winter through bonding with a necromancer. It becomes a comedy of inversions and reversions as Dianora is released from her bond of marriage to Ansaldo, and Ansaldo released from his bond to the necromancer. Decameron at its best.

Some layers from today — reflections and emanations