A Stone

The grass granted color to our shadows,

     Before us on the path; and once

     They rebounded on some stones.

     Bird-shadows, too, brushed by them

With a cry, or lingered where our foreheads

    Leaned together so we almost touched

    Because of words we wanted to share.

                                —Yves Bonnefoy (1923– )

                                           from  Curved Planks
                              translated from the French by Hoyt Rogers 
                                     arrar, Straus and Giroux (2006)

COMMENTARY

“There is a reality with two structural meanings, to be distinguished as the thing-reality and the It-reality. Consciousness, then, is a subject intending reality as its object, but at the same time a something in a comprehending reality; and reality is the object of consciousness, but at the same time a subject of which consciousness is to be predicated.”

Eric Voegelin, In Search of Order, Order and History, Vol V (Vol 18, The Collected Works), p. 30f.

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