In subtitling this book A Divine Comedy, the poet Marc Vincenz brushes
up against Dante, and yet he does so "in the pulse of a breath, /waiting
for the rain / to wash away the dream." There is light here--not perhaps
the roseate of the Florentine retinue--but one we can use right now:
"All visions / gone, but this, a world, / a world / dancing ahead."
Vincenz questions notions of humanity, the potency and power of language
over time, implying perhaps that codes have driven us throughout history
and that the emergence of the AI will yield the next stage in its
evolution. After a long night of the soul, where formal religion yields
to love and imagination, we emerge to a healing space that is both inner
and outer, physical and spiritual. The Syndicate of Water & Light
gives us a sense that we can grow in knowledge and that we can
change--if not, perhaps, the world, then at least within ourselves.