Sens / Meaning Part V

If night and day



Make no sense following each other?


And on this earth there is nothing except this earth?

Here, the poet responds to the limited questions of disbelief from a potential challenging interlocutor. For the cynic, the one who does not see or believe in an unutterable something "beyond", "night and day" indeed make no sense, have no meaning, offer not judgment in themselves. Yet even for the nihilist, the atheist, or the agnostic who hesitates to declare a conviction affirming or denying a greater meaning, a God in this life, the sequence of night and day still demands the use and expanse of calendars, holidays, workdays, hours of rest, hours of work, years and decades, seasons and periods. Just like the thrushes and branches, in their isolated simplicity in this poem, cannot but awaken the staggering systems of life beyond the comprehension of one man.

That conjunction "if", a word which still demands connection, even in the face of doubt and disbelief. "Sense" to an English speaker, unlike the wider application in the original French title, still betrays a predominantly finite, causal connotation, one that is not worthy of comparing or challenging the eternal verities and implications of the "beyond" which the poet announces with calm joy. Almost chiding the inclination that "on this earth" there is nothing "except this earth", he has tacitly left wide open the certitude by faith of a world "beyond" this world.