Comments & Greek artists, painters: The eye languidly learns to illumine the invisible, exerts itself to see things...

Greek poets & Greek artists, contemporary Greek artists


Yannis Stavrou, Man & Tree, oil on canvas

Haris Vlavianos

Pascal's Will

I

The eye languidly
learns to illumine the invisible,
exerts itself to see things
the moment when their essence flees,
the moment when withdrawn from their temporary form
they lose the (holy) aura of presence.


II

Just before he closed his eyes
he asked his sister
to stitch inside his coat’s lining,
(without even looking at it),
the note that contained
the “incontestable proof
of God’s existence”,
convinced that upon opening it
he would see His merciful,
almighty face.


III

The glacial figure of the philosopher
impressed upon his sister’s gaze,
(we can visualize the scene,
the space where it unravels),
and the forsaken – forever now –
content of its last-minute thought.

IV


The night casually spreading
on his lifeless body
has aptly interpreted
his last wish:
not as the need
of a self-centered believer
eager to disclose the truth
that he has just invented
but as the desire
to hand over to the progeny
the void letter
of a dignifying,
profoundly human gesture.


V


The inevitable knowledge of a new reality.
And the mind that now rests
(reconciled with the perpetual music of concepts)
inside its ethereal creations.
The vindication of the thinker that alone,
without the blessings of the specters,
has brought to the world the measures
of his own annihilation.