Ursula K. LeGuin: The Lathe Of Heaven
The following is taken from Ursula K. Le Guin's
superb "The Lathe of Heaven" (which one both the
Hugo and Nebula awards)....
Confucius and you are both dreams,
and I who say you are dreams am a dream
myself. This is a paradox. Tomorrow a
wise man may explain it; that tommorow
will not be for ten thousand generations
-- Chauang Tse; II
Chapter 1
Current-borne, wave-flung,
tugged hugely by
the whole might of the ocean,
the jellyfish driges in tidal abyss.
The light shines through it,
and the dark enters it.
Borne,
flung,
tugged from anywhere to anywhere,
for in the deep sea there is no compass
but nearer and farther,
higher and lower,
the jellyfish hangs and sways;
pulses nmove slight
and quick within it, as the vast
dirunal pulses beat in the moondriven sea.
Hanging, swaying, pulsing,
the most vulnerable and insubstatial creature,
it has for its defense the violence and power
of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted
its being, its going, and its will.
But here rise stubborn continents. The shelves of
gravel and the cliffs of rock break from the water
badly into air, that dry, terrible outerspace of
radiance and instability, where there is no support
for life. And now, now the currents mislead and
the waves betray, breaking their endless circle,
to leap up in loud foam against rock and air,
breaking. . . .
What will the creature made all of seadrift do
on the dry sand of daylight; what will the mind do,
each morning waking?
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