Liberties

In theory, anything can be depicted. And what is? What, on the walls and floors and ceilings of theory, is depicted and not? Not in the lover’s light of retribution. Not in the poets’ utilitarian light.    In the fat-and-fire-in-a-cup light.   Artificial, if that’s what that means: light from other than  the foot-wide sun. Stones dare the sun to burn itself through  because of this light.  Heraclitus with is a mind like a forest, pitched his mind at the sky and it rained and rained down its fires.  Heraclitus ate this light.   Nature loves to hide, he said.  On the walls and ceilings of a cave, someone has made her hand into a shape; another has traced a line and found an animal   there, in the light that moves limbs, moves hooves, in the light that muscles pull at skin to, light as music, fugue, flicker, light of souls, in the light from a fire burning in a sandstone cup.