Lecture

Is
And is not
Will
And will not be
Form a curious web
Of logic, hanging from a thread
By language, whose dual capacity
Equals reality. You’ll see
That a proposition is true
Or false, that it is,
Or it is not.
When we fix the meaning
Of words, the polarities of doubt
Collapse, and everywhere we gaze
On the immense structure of truth.

Take, for instance,
The logic of material things:
In a moment I press into your open hand
Something, not physical,
But prefigured in physicality, an intellectual
Proposition, at least
In language. This is an example of a showing forth,
Clear seeming, and it shows that everything
Either was, or is, seems or will be. You become the dream
Of your own reality, which is at least a reality of mind,
In the mind, reminding you again of the split
Between you and physicality. Now take the soul:

Imagination is an enemy -- it yields to the confusion
Of is and is not, which is a proposition
Of the will, which wills it so
Or not so, and the farther things fall
From duality, the less they prefigure reality.
Imagined pain is less than pain, but more than pain,
Likewise imagined death is more or less. The moral being

If you consider words there’s only empty seeing.