The Brute and the Divine

A mixture of the brute and the divine Man is, That’s why the strife in his soul never ends As the eternal adversaries for superiority strive In the depths of everyone’s divided heart. The brute: Limited by the dimensions of space and time, Intimidated by the oppressive notion of cruel annihilation, Frightened by the savage idea of inglorious temporality, And horrified by the torturous thought of merciless mortality, Eager to pull man down to the material world desires, And with the heavy chains of bodily pleasures him to tie. The divine: Unrestricted by the dimensions of space and time, Animated by the lofty idea of unity with the ONE, Strengthened by the noble thought of clement eternity, And exalted by the gracious conception of comforting immortality, To raise Man up to the immaterial heavens yearns, And with the purified delights of the spirit him to nourish. When, The ruthless brute, victorious from the battle emerges, And body’s barbaric-cry of victory shouts, Benign spirit, inside the prison of here and now is found, From where, silently, the devastation of divinity, observes. When, Eternal spirit triumphant out the war appears, And the illumination of the soul, jubilantly, proclaims, The perishable brute, even from its basic needs is deprived, Thus, slowly, painfully, and persistently is fainting, away. Only, When the brute and the divine a truce declare, And their powers under the banner of universal reason unite, Rendering to each other, at the proper time, its equal share, Harmony is established in our souls and the human is born! © Demetrios Trifiatis 23 May 2021