...to embody empathy...

must I sacrifice integrity?

I believe...

perhaps,

the ideal would be to be everything and thus one,

Yet I fall so short...

therefore the choice arises:

Practice integrity, absolve myself of doubt, gain faith, yet risk repression and delusion,

or

Practice assimilation, permit myself empathy, gain understanding, yet risk unbearable duplicity.

It often seems to me that there are two kinds of love.

One of faith.

One of empathy.

Perhaps in a perfect world, both could simultaneously occur,

But here,

Here either one or the other must prevail.

My faith has failed me.

Yet the empathy I have now attained often seems the greatest horror.

If only to slip back into that bliss, for one moment,

For one kiss, one smile, one glance,

That innocence,

Beautiful,

Scorned,

Forsaken,

Dying,

I am reminded of Yeats's "Second Coming"

"What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"