THE CITY AT THE WATER\'S EDGE: PART FOURHe had been made a god of the sea\nand nothing had been denied him.\nAll doors had opened at his touch,\nall dreams had turned to reality.\nHis modes of being were numerous\nand gave way to new existences\nwhen and where he wished.\nNo locks no bars no disapproval\nno denial.\nIn his freedom he had been like a soaring duck\nclimbing to the boundless skies\nsearching for far distant horizons\nand great stretches of calm and unruffled lake water.\n\nAnd could one girl humiliate him so\nthat all the wide and open things should close\nthat all that boundless ceaseless ebb and flow\nshould be restricted to a sullen pose?\nWhere now the glory of the dreaming state\nwhen all his dreams were turned to dross?\nDreams now could only be used to abate\nthe cold sense of insufferable loss.\n\nThe sea, which had been his goal,\nnow turned in upon itself in self destruction,\nchaos now it was, void and desolate.\nHe slipped back into an unregenerate sphere\nof nightmare and destruction.\nOceanus now a raving tyrant\nTethys an insubordinate slut\nand all the Oceanides a manic pack\nravening upon his now listless desire.\nChaos void and desolate\nchaos void and desolate.\n\nWhen dreams have no contact with the real world\nthey arevoid and in vain. Glaucus was a\ndisproportionate thing, nor man nor fish,\nand Scylla saw the absurdity. He\nin his own eyes was lord of wealthy lands,\nheir to a huge empire of endless dreams\nand seething vision. But when that world came\nin contact with the pinprick of the real\nthen all the glorious golden palaces\nfell and there was nothing left to uphold\nthe vain and empty dream. That\'s the moral.\n\nThe mind that dwells on things wild, unholy,\nimpure and boundless is doomed\nfrom the start to destruction.\nPoor fervent Nietzsche took that long last fall\ninto the void, into oblivion.\nHe was suckeddown beneath the covering pall\nof mind and drowned in his own sensation.\nHis conscious thought, a buoyant float that swam\nabove the swarming depth of stored up deeds\nand meditated slights, took in one dram\nof this chaotic swarm, stuck in the reeds,\nthen slowly, then more fast, began to sink\nbelow the bordered line \'twixt void and mind.\nEnclosed by all that depth, he could not think,\nhe could not understand the subtle blind\nthat closed his eyes to concrete outward form\nand made of mind a massy munching worm.\n\nWe must bind our thoughts and fix them in one\npure shape, nor let them wander high andwild\nand free. It is enough that they are based\non conflict and chaos, that they are the\nchildren of the unknown. There is no cause\nto shout their lineage in the marketplace.\nO Venice! Venice! Consummate mistress\nof the world of form! Perfect dream founded\nin reality! You stand at the edge of\nchaosyet you have tamed the depth and dance\nabove the seething gulf of unconscious\nnescience. No Glaucus are you, no Nietzsche.\nThe blight is held beyond your boundaries.\nYou have caged the beasts, yet you have also\npaid them their due. You know your glory is\nfounded on Chaos and therefore you have\nraised a column and on it you have set\na lion, symbol of the force which you have\ntamed. And that lion and that column stand beside\nthe water at the edge of which you stand. bryant, charles, english, glaucus, greek, jung, myth, nietzsche, poetry, scylla, spoken, venice, word