The Fountain
10 July 2026
The Fountain’
A New Year’s Day poem. 2024.
I.
‘The whole sea is but as one drop’, Aurelius said earnestly,
‘In the corners of the whole world, the great Mount Athos,
But as a clod, all present time is but as one point of eternity’.
Thus every trifling thing quickly changes and dies, because
All things are born of one beginning, every particular hence,
Every several thing, thought upon, then made so by the Lord
Of all, or they come to be by way of necessary consequence.
All hurtful things, the prickly thorn and all things abhorred
Are hence the necessary consequence of things goodly fair.
And so think not of these, the Stoic entreats, as antithetical
To such as those that do for us respect, in honour to share.
Thy mind’s the true fountain of all, the diurnal and poetical.
II.
And yet the Stoic did not know the master of all who know.
From Hegel this doctrine we derive: ‘The True is the whole’.
Time like a river flows, so like a river whatever we know also
Is never given to us immediately, but through a medium sole
All we know is got. Tributaries flow with ideas comparative,
Feed the river of knowing, in her currents the whole gleams.
As Anna Livia the river mother courses through the narrative
Of Finnegans Wake, course you through the chronicle, it seems,
Of my life. Oh river of my deepest thoughts, sincerest feelings,
Memories floating upon your surface like fadeless lilies that fall.
A pox on dreary Stoicism. In your clear light reflected I see things,
The most beautiful of dreams, the source and fountain of my all.