There is no where in you a paradise that is no place and there
You do not enter except without a story.
To enter there is to become unnameable.
Whoever is there is homeless for he has no door and no identity
with which to go out and to come in.
Whoever is nowhere is nobody, and therefore cannot exist except
as unborn:
no disguise will avail him anything
Such a one is neither lost nor found.
But he who has an address is lost.
They fall, they fall into apartments and are securely established!
They find themselves in streets. They are licensed
To proceed from place to place
They now know their own names
They can name several friends and know
Their own telephones must some time ring.
If all telephones ring at once, if all names are shouted at once and
all cars crash at one crossing:
If all cities explode and fly away in dust.
Yet identities refuse to be lost. There is a name and number for
everyone.
There is a definite place for bodies, there are pigeon holes for
ashes:
Such security can business buy!
Who would dare to go nameless in so secure a universe?
Yet, to tell the truth, only the nameless are at home in it.
They hear with them in the center of nowhere the unborn flower
of nothing:
This is the paradise tree. It must remain unseen until words end
and arguments are silent.
Thomas Merton
Photo: Peter Bowers