Book of the Week

Figuring by Maria Popova

only the dreamer wakes

to find dismooned among the stardust

what is lost and what is gained

of the infinite in the finite

to figure and transfigure

the much that calls for more

to brave the light of the world

that which exhausts and exalts

merely the beautiful

divided, indivisible

between sinew and spirit

between art and life

the banality of survival

shadowing the light of immortality

to gaze and turn away

from romance to reason

from terror to transcendence

unmastering

the heart’s circumference

bound by neither mind nor matter

in the darkness of being

searching for totality

into the unfathomed

where splendor dwells

to live and to vanish

between the scale of atoms and the scale of worlds

between the time of monarchs and the time of stars

tracing the thread of being

from shoreless seeds to stardust

The above poem is the the index to the book. Every line is a chapter title. Absolutely brilliant! "Figuring" connects lives and events through space and time, a book for the connoisseur.