Extract Five

Empedocles:
We think chiefly with the heart-blood, for there the elements are more fully mingled than in any other part of the body.
The heart is nourished in seas of blood coursing to and fro, so there above all is what humans call thought.
You carry your messages in your mixtures.
The trilling wire in your blood
Sings below inveterate scars
And reconciles forgotten wars.

To move your memories you must move your blood.
Insofar as you change in your nature, so far changed thoughts are always present to you.
Thus those who are wise stretch their stomach to contact the past and the future.

So put the words I say firmly into your crowded thoughts, jamming them down wave by wave by wave across your internal spaces, assuredly they will be with you through life, and you will gain much else from them, for of themselves they will grow into your character, according to its nature, as the eddies of blood grow steady.
For know that all things have intelligence and a share of thought.
Thus everything has breathings and smellings, thus by the will of chance everything possesses thought.

Once all creatures, both animals and birds, were tame and gentle to humans, and bright was the flame of their friendship.

So alas that the pitiless day did not destroy me first, before I devised for my lips the cruel deed of eating flesh.  

Copyright John Sutton 1999.

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