Now and Forever, Allen Ginsberg
Meditation
What endures? In what, if anything, might immortality reside? The desire for immortality often leads us to folly and falseness. And yet the waning moon over Aspen peaks seems as permanent as ever, especially in the clear blackness of the summer night sky. Ginsberg wrote this poem in Aspen in July 1992. The Colorado mountains, like all mountains I suppose, reverberate with the words that flow from the beginning of time. These reverberations are not the sighs of primordial age, but of primordial youth. It is through words and love, words of love, but not mere words only, that we touch immortality. The vain want their words to be remembered. The humble words are those content to have been uttered quietly in love. What are the words, the breath of long sentences, for which you want to be remembered? Not the words of anger, but the words of love? The heart beating still. Youth still come.
Todd Breyfogle, Denver, Colorado
