It’s a line that winds its way back through all the tales,
back through history’s corpse and its entrails.
It leads through an increasingly indistinct blur
to a golden age in which we did, seemed, and were.
Observe it as it twists back through the pales!
It shows up in a limited number of tomes.
You can trace it through codices, fictions and poems.
Unlike buying a house, the cost is small
to track it along its switchbacks through the ages.
But how easy it is to get lost in it all –
in the fancy guesswork of the sages,
their interminable questing after reasons
for be, do and seem with which their books are teeming.
Let’s put the question to Mr. Stevens:
“Is being the finale of doing or seeming?”
[Previous: The Name]
[Name: The Way]