Useful worthlessness

 Agrorum stercoratio

 Vile excrementum stercus, sed inutile non es;

    Tu nutrimento das alimenta meo.

Johannes Audoenus (John Owen, 1564-1622), Epigrammata, II, 194

Manuring the fields

Dung, you are worthless but not useless waste;

    It is you who nourishes the food I eat.

Sur les Terres que l'on fume

    Vil excrément, affreuse pourriture,

Que le nez, que les yeux, ne peuvent point souffrir,

    C'est toi, qui sert de nourriture

    Aux fruits qui doivent me nourrir.

Épigrammes d'Owen, traduuites en vers français par M. Le Brun. 

À Gand, chez C. J. Fernand, Imprimeur, te Putte. 1809.

The void

 

(...) That shade. Once lying. Now standing. That a body? Yes. Say that a body. Somehow standing. In the dim void. 

A place. Where none. A time when try see. Try say. How small. How vast. How if not boundless bounded. Whence the dim. Not now. Know better now. Unknow better now. Know only no out of. No knowing how know only no out of. Into only. Hence another. Another place where none. Whither once whence no return. No. No place but the one. None but the one where none. Whence never once in. Somehow in. Beyondless. Thenceless there. Thitherless there. Thenceless thitherless there. (...)

 

Samuel Beckett, "Worstward Ho" (1981-82). Poems. Short Fiction. Criticism. The Grove Centenary Edition, Volume IV. Ed. Paul Auster. Grove Press, New York, 2006. Pp. 472-3.

The reign of the uncreating word

 Art after art goes out, and all is night,

See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,

Mountains of casuistry heaped o'er her head!

Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before,

Shrinks to her second cause and is no more.

Physic of metaphysic begs defence,

And metaphysic calls for aid on sense!

See mystery to mathematics fly!

In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave and die.

Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,

And unawares morality expires.

For public flame, nor private, dares to Shine,

Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!

Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored;

Light dies before thy uncreating word;

Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall,

And universal darkness buries all. 

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)