WHEN Anaxagoras says: Even the snow is
black!
he is taken
by the scientists very seriously
because he is enunciating a “ principle,” a “
law “
that all
things are mixed, and therefore the purest white snow
has in it an element of
blackness.
That they call science, and reality.
I call it mental conceit and
mystification
and
nonsense, for pure snow is white to us
white and white and only white
with a lovely bloom of
whiteness upon white
in which the soul delights and the senses
have an experience of
bliss.
And life is for delight, and for bliss
and dread, and the dark,
rolling ominousness of doom
then the bright dawning of delight
again
from off the
sheer white snow, or the poised moon.
And in the shadow of the sun the snow is blue, so
blue-aloof
with a
hint of the frozen bells of the scylla flower
but never the ghost of a
glimpse of Anaxagoras’ funeral black.