Life Is a Veil (a Postcard from Ulysses to Telemachus)
To know it is made of copper and tin does not unriddle the sword. Why, when copper and tin come together, do men pile up like grapes cut from a vine? Whose harvest is this? What wine will be made from the blood of such grapes? Upon whose table will this bounty be laid? Who will eat and who will drink, becoming intoxicated with the wine and moved to dance to the strummings of an eternal lyre?
When I do such reaping on the battlefield, there may be great commotion, such that no one is certain who has fallen. No one mourns the man. Not his comrades, not his wife or his children. How long will that moment last? It seems it could go on forever. Eventually wails and moans break the silence, men pound their chests and women pull at their hair. My own men rejoice at the victory. How long will it be before the rejoicing ones become mourners? How long before those mourners find themselves rejoicing? They will laugh again, enjoy a hearty meal and delicious wine, sigh with pleasure as the evening sky fills with moonlight. Life is a veil, continually rearranged.
When I do such reaping on the battlefield, there may be great commotion, such that no one is certain who has fallen. No one mourns the man. Not his comrades, not his wife or his children. How long will that moment last? It seems it could go on forever. Eventually wails and moans break the silence, men pound their chests and women pull at their hair. My own men rejoice at the victory. How long will it be before the rejoicing ones become mourners? How long before those mourners find themselves rejoicing? They will laugh again, enjoy a hearty meal and delicious wine, sigh with pleasure as the evening sky fills with moonlight. Life is a veil, continually rearranged.