Harmonia!

Or: Can Heraclitus right us?

Editor’s note: A few weeks before my dear friend Will (one of the three founders of Utopian Idiots) passed away last August, he sent me a handful of his poems to publish. This is the second of those poems. The first can be found here.

“οὐ ξυνιᾶσιν ὅκως διαφερόµενον ἑωυτῷ ὁµολογέει· παλίντροπος ἁρµονίη ὅκωσπερ τόξου καὶ λύρης.”

“Men do not understand how something drawn in opposite directions is in harmony with itself; harmony is a turning back upon itself just as with the bow or the lyre.”

                                                                                    Heraclitus, Fr. 51

Tuned! The peg is tight. One strike, it rings, The bell in the strings. It sings Like a howl in the night. Tight! The wire is taut. The lambs won’t stray Nor wriggle away. Just pray That the wolf is caught! Time! Our life is strain. Like wire and string To bind and sing, or sting with whips of pain.