Being Is an Unrequited Passion

Music: Ogive No. 3.
By Erik Satie. Sequenced by David Cooke.

Alpha List

Being is an unrequited passion
Of which the object is eternity.
No answer is more salient than the question,
Not of why, but what it is to be.
In each of us there burns a fuel-less fire
Eternal in amazement and desire.

Meaning is the means by which desire
Alleviates the pain of pointless passion,
Revealing in the miracle of fire
Knowledge of a just eternity,
Unending love and paradise to be,
Sufficient to semanticize the question.

Let us de-semanticize the question,
Intent on separation from desire,
Letting be the wish to ever be.
In time alone we touch the ancient passion.
The moment is its own eternity,
Holding us forever in its fire.

Given that eight days a fuel-less fire
Answered for our ancestors the question,
Bearing embers of eternity.
Reason cannot overcome desire,
Insisting that the sense was merely passion
Embracing the demand to ever be,
Longing more than life to ever be.

Eight days we witnessed the untended fire
Lapping at the hollows of our passion,
Lighting the dark chambers of our question,
Entering the pith of our desire,
Noumenescence of eternity.

Stopped time does not describe eternity.
Each soul in time must also ever be
The infinite of its most dread desire,
Having been itself a fuel-less fire,
Each the answer to the wordless question,
Leaving all behind with bitter passion.
In that passion, too, we'll ever be
Zealous for eternity on fire,
Answering a question with desire.