No

No one is ever good enough,

or kind enough.

No one stays awake

through the lovely rush of rain which fills our dark.

No one can hold the music.

They are counting coins or frowning,

they are toppling, they are drowning.

No one is good.

But nothing is as quick as us,

no screen can match us,

tape’s whirr catch us

nothing tilts like sun

to light from sad.

Nothing in all history

can reach to take your hand from me,

the dark, the rain’s gift, O

we should be glad.

                        —Alison Brackenbury  (1953–  )

                                        from   Then 
                                                                                                   
                                                 Carcanet Press  (2013)

“Human consciousness is not a free-floating something but always a concrete consciousness of concrete persons. The consciousness of the existential tension toward the ground, therefore, while constituting the specific human nature that distinguishes man from other beings, is not the whole of his nature. For consciousness is always concretely grounded in man’s bodily existence, which links him to all realms of being, from the realm of organic matter to the realm of the animate. Eric Voegelin, Anamnesis, vol 6, The Collected Works, p 198.

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