Our Soul takes on the
Color of our Thoughts.²
A Brain simmers & bubbles within
The cracking tenement of the Skull—³
In the celestial Palace of the blazing Skull—⁴
Consciousness blooms—
As a dark drop of Ink.⁵
We hang our head—ostensibly—
And subsequent, we find, that such is
Not the posture of our Immortal Mind—⁶
Emancipate yourself from mental slavery:
None but ourselves can Free our Minds!⁷
Some strange Thoughts transcend
Our wonted themes—and into Glory peep:⁸
We embrace in a single Thought the world of things
As they are, and of things as they could have been—
And we realize that a single System includes All:⁹
Ordinary mind includes Eternal Perceptions.¹⁰
¹ William Blake, Proverbs of Hell
² Marcus Aurelius tr. Gregory Hayes, Meditations
³ James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
⁴ Padmasambhava tr. Gyurme Dorje, The Tibetan Book of the Dead
⁵ Vanessa Stauffer, Pygmalion
⁶ Emily Dickinson, To Hang Our Head
⁷ Bob Marley, Redemption Song
⁸ Henry Vaughan, Friends Departed
⁹ Italo Calvino tr. William Weaver, The Origin of Birds
¹⁰ Allen Ginsberg, Cosmopolitan Greetings