The decades of intense searching have yielded not an inkling but fatigue and a disdain for my holy grail of meaning But as simply as a cardinal will chirp my much sought insight reveals itself in ironic, anti-climactic softness and today I finally understand That I always understood That there is no understanding Nor was there ever anything to understand And the truths everyone offered in their love of me and the words spoken with hope my deafness rejected and the secrets of the druids I never learned and stellae of forgotten races all bespeak this single truth That life can only be lived And the million images I've seen and the shivering skin of my ecstasy and the piercing sounds of the crow and the fragrance of jasmine in the night it all lies outside the realm of understanding And the value of life is but itself. 9 VII 98