The wisdom handed down by the ancients

The wisdom handed down by the ancients
breaks up into miserable fragments the moment I breathe
at every beat stasis renders it vain
confirmed and unsurprising.
How can we forget that the shades, the disquietudes
merely dissimulate rigid rest
a silence already immense?
The wisdom handed down by the ancients
therefore, must only be thought of
as the headlong flight of a herd
of animals pursued by fire:
a not unnatural, non-formal event
which happens many times in a life
and millions of times in every memory
and imagination – an event
both vital and mortal
and fundamental
which makes of existence an extinction
and not only the appearance of movement.

By Andrea Raos