Tony Brinkley
In the Presence of My Enemies
There is the grand truth . . . . He says No! in thunder; but the
Devil himself cannot make him say yes.
—Herman Melville, From a letter to Hawthorne
[T]he EVERLASTING NO (das ewige Nein) pealed
authoritatively through all the recesses of my Being, of my ME;
and then was it that my whole ME stood up . . . borne aloft into
the azure of Eternity. . . . the EVERLASTING YEA. . . .Be no
longer a Chaos, but a World. . . . Whatsoever thy hand findeth to
do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; for
the Night cometh, wherein no man can work.
—Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus
Now I don’t need to always say NO anymore.
—From a dream (1930s), dreaming Fascism’s Yes — a
nightmare recorded in The Third Reich of Dreams by Charlotte Beradt
Your eyes in the dark teethe your gaze — I say
No – the spaces echo my word: No! If I could
be less than nothing in your eyes — that’s the
trick — to hide in the things that you see you
don’t see — at random among objects — voids in
the emptiness — or in handfuls of water your
hands can’t take hold of? . . . In hiding — con-
cealed in your sight with no insight — among
things as they are in themselves as is — beyond
grasping when trying to hold what your grasp. . . .
Does No mean Yes if you say, Yes! it does?
Does I-will-not tell you I will? To be dressed
in your eyes I’m undressed in my mind but dis-
guise how undressed I feel. . . . In the dark, this
darkness is not a little dark — it does not wash
out in the wash from the wash — from dresses
an outcry stains. . . . In the dark I say No, and
you say I meant Yes – No is Yes in these circles
of enemies. I am lying, you say, but I’m telling
the truth. . . In the dark, insects listen and hear
the trees cry for the generations of leaves.
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