There is no limit to what you can forget.  This is your final freedom.

Not that I can know your “this”

Nor you know my “this”

Not that our “thises” can join

Nor be compared or measured

But the undeniable “thisness” of “this”

We can know

We can communicate

And stop there

If there be just one abstraction worth making

One extension into shared conceptual space

One attempted acknowledgment

Of our surprised humanity

Let it be simply the abstraction

“This”

The thing with the eyes

Is that they don’t analyse

But see, can only see

Look, only ever look

Straight at the unlimited

I may call you a stranger

But I think we both know

How inappropriate that really is

I may say “goodbye” to you

But the impossibility

Of really doing that

Is very clear to us both

Pass in the end.

Even you, old friend

Though you seemed at times

To challenge this law.

But no, you too

Now finally replaced

By space.

He’d driven for some time

Before coming to a narrow bridge

A sign saying Cuckmere.

“That’s odd” he thought

“The same Cuckmere?”

Its banks steep and close

Water a quick muddy brown

Not the slow, low-banked friend

He thought he knew.

“But then, how recognizable am I now

After all these twists and turns?

And is there a stretch of me

That still races over

Mixed pebbled shallows?”

Is it not sufficient to know that somewhere or other, there is ecstasy, there is wonder, there is fullness?

What difference does it make on which shores these waves of experience break?

Why this pressure for them all to converge here?

Ultimate reality? Absolute truth?

There’s nothing “ultimate” about ultimate reality.

Nothing supra-dimensional, nothing timeless,

Everything relative, everything transitory.

What’s so ultimate about the sheen on the floor?

About the smell of evening air through the bathroom window?

These things are so much closer, so much more dangerous!

You look at the blue sky and think of benevolent ultimate reality?

I tell you, you see it for what it is,

See the killer tone behind the word “blue”,

See the sheer drop behind the word “sky”,

You see all that….it’ll bite your head off.

For you there is only one direction. Down.