(Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi: Adoration of the Magi.)
The Second Wise Man
My faith that in Time's constant
Flow lay real assurance
Broke down on this analysis--
At any given instant
All solids dissolve, no wheels revolve,
And facts have no endurance--
And who knows if it is by design or pure inadvertence
That the Present destroys its inherited self-importance?
With envy, terror, rage, regret,
We anticipate or remember but never are.
To discover how to be living now
Is the reason I follow this star.
The Third Wise Man
Observing how myopic
Is the Venus of the Soma,
The concept Ought would make, I thought,
Our passions philanthropic,
And rectify in the sensual eye
Both lens-flare and lens-coma:
But arriving at the Greatest Good by introspection
And counting the Greater Number, left no time for affection,
Laughter, kisses, squeezing, smiles:
And I learned why the learned are as despised as they are.
To discover how to be loving now
Is the reason I follow this star.
(W. H. Auden, from "The Summons," For the Time Being. [1944])
Happy Feast of the Epiphany, everyone.
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