Of Our Love for Emptiness
Of Our Love for Emptiness - meaning Summary
Emptiness as Liberating Source
The poem presents emptiness as both origin and destination: a praised void that paradoxically brings existence into being and then dissolves it. The speaker recounts a long practice of returning to that emptiness until a sudden release removes selfhood, fear, and desire. Material and linguistic certainties—mountain, straw, words—are rendered insubstantial and swept away. The overall meaning centers on spiritual unbinding and the limits of language to capture that vanishing.
Read Complete AnalysesPraise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence: This place made from our love for that emptiness! Yet somehow comes emptiness, this existence goes. Praise to that happening, over and over! For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness. Then one swoop, one swing of the arm, that work is over. Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope, free of mountainous wanting. The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw blown off into emptiness. These words I’m saying so much begin to lose meaning: Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw: Words and what they try to say swept out the window, down the slant of the roof.
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