Liber Solis - Chapter 3

Verses

There are things made of dust that carry something dust cannot explain.

The sun touches the stone and the stone keeps silent. Do not assume this means nothing happened.

A body is a small house with many doors, and nobody agrees on who first entered.

Some say the breath belongs to the flesh. Others say the flesh only borrows the breath. The wind has never bothered to answer.

I have seen poor vessels carry strange riches, and golden vessels filled with nothing but heat.

Do not mock the clay. Fire also needs somewhere to dwell.

At noon the shadow becomes small, but it does not die. Some hidden things only wait for the light to move.

Perhaps spirit dreams that it has a body. Perhaps the body dreams that it has a spirit. Either way, something wakes thirsty.

The desert does not ask whether the traveler is flesh or soul. It takes water from both.

A flame may enter a lamp without becoming the lamp.

We call the body weak because it breaks, yet even the unseen must borrow its tongue to speak here.

The sun gives no explanation for its fire. It burns the faithful and the faithless with equal attention.

If there is treasure hidden in us, perhaps its strangeness is not that it is precious, but that it agreed to live here at all.

When evening comes, heat leaves the sand slowly. I think some things remain inside us the same way, long after their source has disappeared.