Behind the Act Is Always the Perception

Music: Carolan's Draught.
By Turlough O'Carolan. Sequenced by Barry Taylor.

Alpha List

Behind the act is always the perception.
Often we are led astray by light.
No chaos is more damaging than order
Neatly taped across a mystery.
In love and awe we worship only darkness,
Embracing what we know we cannot know.

Silence is a sea, while what we know
Etches the green hills of our perception.
Truth, unspeakable, resides in darkness,
However much we need the gift of light.

God is just a word. Each mystery
Awakens to the first pale gray of order.
Bright glory bathes the sculpted hills in order,
Rolling towards the edge of what we know.
Inside its veil of blue, the mystery
Eludes the clarity of our perception.
Longing is a quality of light
As in each word we sense an inner darkness.
No word but is a stairway down to darkness,
Down to chaos seething within order.
Live, then, within the pale of what you know,
In touch with terrors gilded by the light.
So may you part the curtain of perception,
Alive to all the grace of mystery.

Miracles diminish mystery.
In olden times, eight days God held off darkness,
Defining faith through sensuous perception.
In aberration, thus, do some find order.

Even as we build on what we know,
Linking thoughts in a vast chain of light,
Like a wave, light rises from mystery,
Erecting knowledge on a sea of darkness,
Now ordering, now smashing our perception.