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  • AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought
    • AZURE Volume 3, Issue 3 >
      • MENAGE A TROIS, WITH HORSE by Don Dussault
      • THE BLACK by Ben Colandrea
      • BLUE SKY LANGUAGE by Christien Gholson
      • UN DETECTIVE VIEJO by Franco Strong
    • AZURE Volume 3, Issue 2 >
      • THE CLEANSING by Linda Dennard
      • SHUFFLE by Debbie Fox
      • DID YOU FALL OR RISE FROM THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING? by M. Ann Reed
      • THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE PORNQUEEN by Omar Sabbagh
      • KIGALI MEMORIAL by Carlos Andres Gomez
      • PANTOUM OF THE MEAT by Ouita Rogers
    • AZURE Volume 3, Issue 1 >
      • HOW TO WRITE A BIOGRAPHY by Joanne B. Mulcahy
      • PROTOCOL NINE-NINE-NINE-NINE by Kenneth Hanes
      • LESS' MORE by TWIXT
      • POINTLESS MR. PROBST by Beatriz Seelaender
    • ARCHIVES: VOLUME 2 >
      • AZURE Volume 2, Issue 4 >
        • SYLVAN PASSAGES by Dan Wood
        • SISTER ALONE by Janet M Powers
        • CENTURY 2.1 by Alan Flurry
        • CLAIMED BY THE SEA by Sam Reese
      • AZURE Volume 2, Issue 3 >
        • CROSSHATCHING by M.K. Rainey
        • LULLABY by Barbara Daddino
        • HOUSEMOUTH (and other poems) by Anhvu Buchanan and Brent Piller
        • THE RESIDUE IN PUBLIC TEA AND COFFEE CUPS by V.B. Borjen
        • SYZYGY (and other poems) by Malorie Seeley-Sherwood
      • AZURE Volume 2, Issue 2 >
        • DRAGONFLIES: A DISCOURSE ON ANXIETY by Lara Lillibridge
        • AND RICHARD BURBAGE ALSO HAD A SISTER by Freya Shipley
        • THE WATCHERS by M.K. Rainey
        • JAZZ INTERACTION WITH SYMBOLS by Sarah T.
        • SPIDER (and other poems) by Natalie Crick
      • AZURE Volume 2, Issue 1 >
        • ECHOES by Daniel Freeman
        • MAPS by Susan Brennan
        • EDGAR'S FATHER'S MAGIC WORDS by JWM Morgan
        • LOCKJAW: IN TWO ACTS by James Blevins
        • WHAT THE LIVING DO by Susan Wadds
    • Archives: Volume 1 >
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 10 >
        • SUSURROS DE RECURRENCIA by Franco Strong
        • THE OLD MAN by Sarah T.
        • PERMUTATIONS by Laura Cesarco Eglin
        • WORLD PEACE 3 by Gustavo Alberto Garcia Vaca
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 9 >
        • LITTLE GHOST by Danny Judge
        • THE LAST ALLUSIONIST by Sakina B. Fakhri
        • CHURCH by Diana McClure
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 8 >
        • DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS by Nancy Flynn
        • WHAT I COULDN'T SAY by Erika Ranee & Diana McClure
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 7 >
        • BRASS TYRANT AND THE AMERICAN THIRST by Kirk Marshall
        • LADY KILLER by Monika Viola
        • THE RIBBONS by Ferguson Williams
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 6 >
        • AURELIA: A BALLET IN PROSE (ACT 2 - Part 1) by Sakina B. Fakhri
        • NEW AGE UNCAGED by Frank Light
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 5 >
        • THE TRIALS OF TOBIT by Joseph Lisowski
        • LIKE MANY GIANT FOOTPRINTS (and other poems) by William Doreski
        • AURELIA: A BALLET IN PROSE (ACT I) by Sakina B. Fakhri
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 4 >
        • WARDENCLIFF by Barbara Daddino
        • BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY by Reg Darling
        • AURELIA: A BALLET IN PROSE (LIBRETTO) by Sakina B. Fakhri
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 3 >
        • LAWTON, OKLAHOMA by Mark Lawley
        • TWEETY BIRD'S GRACE by Diana McClure
        • CONTAGION AND THE DINNER GUEST by Sakina B. Fakhri
        • ON POETRY AND PROSE by Sakina B. Fakhri
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 2 >
        • LETTER TO THE EDITOR by Alex Mosiak
        • TWO MICE IN A BLACK BOX & THE DECONSTRUCTION OF LANGUAGE by Sakina B. Fakhri
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 1 >
        • CHARACTER SKETCHES by Diana McClure
        • SEASONS ON A GRAVESTONE by Sakina B. Fakhri
        • COCKTAIL PARTY by Diana McClure
        • DESUETUDE by Sakina B. Fakhri
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Back to AZURE (Volume 3, Issue 3)

The Black

By Ben Colandrea
Picture

He who lives long a host of things will know,
The world affords him nothing new to see.
Much have I seen, in wandering to and fro,
Including crystallized humanity.
 
– Goethe
​
The Black has ever fostered balance in the bower of the mind. Long has it wore at the center of thought as zenith, as nadir. In the guise of a shadow, it has ventured without its privacy to offer itself to the world. But, alas, the Black, it is a lonely illumination. Lo the shadow of the world and the worldly below. Loreless, the miasma of the mind is the nature of the night, of the Gray, of the worldly despair into which the Black descends. Through every tempest and every locus calls the shadow into the night. Leave us! Leave us – so it is said to the shadow! Leave us – so it is said from the mob, the miasma of the blind, the gloomy and the Gray! How long has the shadow against the night been the greater black? How few have sought the shadow and found it lurking, lifelike against the lack. How few there are; how few, they grieve. The few have become as the shadow, full of sorrow. For, the many have resigned themselves to casuistry. Truth, they have never loved; but hopefulness and wishfulness, they have coveted truthfully. In silence, then, the few have observed the candor and the light, and these they have cast aside. Leave us! Leave us – so it is said to the mob! Leave us – so it is said from the shadow! Among the music of the many, was not the greatest sound the silence of the few? All has been sundered by an immutable null. Still, the Black cannot dwell in years but in moments; it sojourns to those who admit its shape. And with the dawn, the shadow retreats again, its brevity contained in an instance of revelation. The few must languish in the miasma there, minding the blind who, even in blindness, know nothing of the Black.

But from behind the door of the penetralium, the Black reveals itself not as a facet of the intellect, but as what it is, intellection itself. And from its noble mount, its profundity surges out unto the mist of the Gray; and ever from its palatial loft, it gazes down, a mountain and an eye, seeing all that may be seen from on high. And from the Gray, ever have its guests wandered into the Black, ascending into its labyrinth and ebony glow, knowing that which they did not wish to know. As a rumor, the Black has regressed into the Gray and beyond. But now it lengthens into a towering form. The guests and the Gray have parted from the mist, their incognizance, their burden; they are naked where now they know of truth. The Gray is abdicated where it becomes the Black, for the Gray cannot be what the Gray cannot know. However high the mist of the Gray ascends, it shall never become as the Black. The door before the Black does not discern between bliss and burden; it is as a lake, a surface of waveless reflection. So, when the Gray appears before the door, it may only enter when it has separated sentiment from reason, the shimmer that separates the Black from the Gray.

The Black discovers all; truth is its totality. For, all is fading into the Gray, but the Gray is fading into the Black. And from the Black, all peers out upon the Gray. But in the Black, there are no illusions; there is only the semblance of a sobering vision, a dispersion of folly, a balance of solace and insight. In the end, there are not many and few, but all befriended by a collective inevitability. In splendor and serenity, they share with each other a modest, imperishable joy. And, in that same eternity, they no longer ask: what divides the shadow from the night? And, in that same eternity, they no longer wonder: what is the Black; where is the White?
Ben Colandrea received a bachelor’s degree in English and humanities from Fairleigh Dickinson University. His work has appeared in “The Wayfarer”. He is a self-taught writer who gives his free time to reading philosophy and studying the liberal arts.

Back to AZURE (Volume 3, Issue 3)
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  • ABOUT
    • Our Literary Aesthetic
    • Staff
    • Contact Us
    • SUBSCRIBE
  • LIBRARY SHOP
  • AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought
    • AZURE Volume 3, Issue 3 >
      • MENAGE A TROIS, WITH HORSE by Don Dussault
      • THE BLACK by Ben Colandrea
      • BLUE SKY LANGUAGE by Christien Gholson
      • UN DETECTIVE VIEJO by Franco Strong
    • AZURE Volume 3, Issue 2 >
      • THE CLEANSING by Linda Dennard
      • SHUFFLE by Debbie Fox
      • DID YOU FALL OR RISE FROM THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING? by M. Ann Reed
      • THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE PORNQUEEN by Omar Sabbagh
      • KIGALI MEMORIAL by Carlos Andres Gomez
      • PANTOUM OF THE MEAT by Ouita Rogers
    • AZURE Volume 3, Issue 1 >
      • HOW TO WRITE A BIOGRAPHY by Joanne B. Mulcahy
      • PROTOCOL NINE-NINE-NINE-NINE by Kenneth Hanes
      • LESS' MORE by TWIXT
      • POINTLESS MR. PROBST by Beatriz Seelaender
    • ARCHIVES: VOLUME 2 >
      • AZURE Volume 2, Issue 4 >
        • SYLVAN PASSAGES by Dan Wood
        • SISTER ALONE by Janet M Powers
        • CENTURY 2.1 by Alan Flurry
        • CLAIMED BY THE SEA by Sam Reese
      • AZURE Volume 2, Issue 3 >
        • CROSSHATCHING by M.K. Rainey
        • LULLABY by Barbara Daddino
        • HOUSEMOUTH (and other poems) by Anhvu Buchanan and Brent Piller
        • THE RESIDUE IN PUBLIC TEA AND COFFEE CUPS by V.B. Borjen
        • SYZYGY (and other poems) by Malorie Seeley-Sherwood
      • AZURE Volume 2, Issue 2 >
        • DRAGONFLIES: A DISCOURSE ON ANXIETY by Lara Lillibridge
        • AND RICHARD BURBAGE ALSO HAD A SISTER by Freya Shipley
        • THE WATCHERS by M.K. Rainey
        • JAZZ INTERACTION WITH SYMBOLS by Sarah T.
        • SPIDER (and other poems) by Natalie Crick
      • AZURE Volume 2, Issue 1 >
        • ECHOES by Daniel Freeman
        • MAPS by Susan Brennan
        • EDGAR'S FATHER'S MAGIC WORDS by JWM Morgan
        • LOCKJAW: IN TWO ACTS by James Blevins
        • WHAT THE LIVING DO by Susan Wadds
    • Archives: Volume 1 >
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 10 >
        • SUSURROS DE RECURRENCIA by Franco Strong
        • THE OLD MAN by Sarah T.
        • PERMUTATIONS by Laura Cesarco Eglin
        • WORLD PEACE 3 by Gustavo Alberto Garcia Vaca
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 9 >
        • LITTLE GHOST by Danny Judge
        • THE LAST ALLUSIONIST by Sakina B. Fakhri
        • CHURCH by Diana McClure
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 8 >
        • DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS by Nancy Flynn
        • WHAT I COULDN'T SAY by Erika Ranee & Diana McClure
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 7 >
        • BRASS TYRANT AND THE AMERICAN THIRST by Kirk Marshall
        • LADY KILLER by Monika Viola
        • THE RIBBONS by Ferguson Williams
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 6 >
        • AURELIA: A BALLET IN PROSE (ACT 2 - Part 1) by Sakina B. Fakhri
        • NEW AGE UNCAGED by Frank Light
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 5 >
        • THE TRIALS OF TOBIT by Joseph Lisowski
        • LIKE MANY GIANT FOOTPRINTS (and other poems) by William Doreski
        • AURELIA: A BALLET IN PROSE (ACT I) by Sakina B. Fakhri
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 4 >
        • WARDENCLIFF by Barbara Daddino
        • BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY by Reg Darling
        • AURELIA: A BALLET IN PROSE (LIBRETTO) by Sakina B. Fakhri
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 3 >
        • LAWTON, OKLAHOMA by Mark Lawley
        • TWEETY BIRD'S GRACE by Diana McClure
        • CONTAGION AND THE DINNER GUEST by Sakina B. Fakhri
        • ON POETRY AND PROSE by Sakina B. Fakhri
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 2 >
        • LETTER TO THE EDITOR by Alex Mosiak
        • TWO MICE IN A BLACK BOX & THE DECONSTRUCTION OF LANGUAGE by Sakina B. Fakhri
      • AZURE Volume 1, Issue 1 >
        • CHARACTER SKETCHES by Diana McClure
        • SEASONS ON A GRAVESTONE by Sakina B. Fakhri
        • COCKTAIL PARTY by Diana McClure
        • DESUETUDE by Sakina B. Fakhri
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • CONTESTS
  • BLOG