The Night of Consciousness
A wild dog runs through my veinsIt’s not from here, but from other timesIt roams through the millennia lost in my dreamsIt leaps over so many mountainsAnd crosses so many desertsAs far as the moon can see from its silenceIn this dog’s howls there is no story at allThere is only vastness, space, and the universe that knows itselfSilent in the intense night, without consciousness having burst forth to admire itThe wild dog never rests,And feels the cold sweat on its warm skinAnd fights fiercely for the pleasure of running through the entire wild worldWhether challenged to survive,Whether threatened by other ferocious animalsThere is no dream he has not already livedThere is no birth of nature that hides from himThere is no battle he has not foughtThere is no uninhabited territory he does not knowThere is no night free from his distant howlThere is no glacial or equatorial air that his panting lungs have not breathedA wild dog runs through my veins He is from another timeAnd he is neither violent nor maliciousBecause in his time, there is no such thing as maliceHe is neither charitable nor subservientBecause in his time there are only wild beings like himNo one knows where he came fromOr if one day he will leave my depthsHe has always existed and will never dieHe will gaze upon the moon, untouched by any human gaze, from the top of a sacred hillHe will know the sunbeams that have never touched a single thoughtHe will howl loudly, searching for his wild companion, for that is his natureThere are neither doubts nor certainties along his pathsThere is only the virgin earth, open to his footstepsAnd the freedom of having no path at allOnce he saw a campfire around which men of the stones were musingUnconcerned with yesterday or tomorrowThey gazed at one another as quietly as the purity and innocence of nature can beAnd the wild dog ran toward themAnd upon touching them, he plunged into human history,And nothing was forgotten by himAnd almost blinded by what he sawAnd anxious, panting, exhaustedHe found another campfire and other men gathered around itHe ran desperately toward themAnd he can return to his own time,Where there is no time at all,And he leaps from one mountain to another, strong,And crosses the deserts,And he is so free because he does not know what a prison isOnce he experienced restSleeping in a field of grass, dewy with the dawnThat was the only time I almost saw himWhen I lost awareness of myself and everything around meBut I became him and was able to wander through the unknown nightAnd I traveled through the veins of a man without being a manI saw bursts of thoughts and memories on the horizonWithout knowing what that meantAnd I ran freely, without any fatigue.Sometimes I almost see him.
**“The Night of Consciousness”** is a poem about ancestry, consciousness, and the unconscious that imagines, within contemporary man, the presence of a nature far older than human history itself. The wild dog that runs through the veins of the speaker represents an ancestral force, free from the moral, social, and intellectual categories constructed throughout civilization.
This image brings the poem closer to some of the great questions of **psychology and philosophy**: What exists within a person before they recognize themselves as an individual? How much of our nature remains connected to our ancestors? And what happens when human consciousness encounters that which existed before it?
The idea also resonates with the tradition of the **unconscious** in the psychology of **Carl Gustav Jung**, especially with the notion that there are profound dimensions of the psyche that transcend individual experience. In philosophy, the tension between nature and civilization appears at various points, from **Rousseau** to **Nietzsche**, while literature often transforms wild nature into a symbol of what society attempts to tame.
There is also a historical dimension. The dog traverses millennia, encounters humans gathered around campfires, and, upon touching them, plunges into human history. Poetry thus creates a kind of journey through **human ancestry**, predating writing, morality, and modern consciousness.
Between animal and human, between the unconscious and thought, between freedom and civilization, **“The Night of Consciousness”** invites us to reflect on what may still exist within us: a wordless memory, a guiltless nature, and a freedom that predates the very idea of a path.
Comments
No comments yet.