“Five hundred” means the many, those, them all,
Fixing precisely something dimensionless;
Desires that drown within intent address
Some final count — the ministries of a wall.
As “breathless” means both dead and alive —
Already suffocated or still anticipating
Surprise, so moments of terror contrive
To posit ill ambitions’ sating.
Five hundred commands are instantly summed —
Conscious, unconscious, acts a million strong:
Thinking, unthinking, instinctual, restive, stunned;
Into this order the world cascades as long
As all the time one focuses on the one.
Ministries – Here, mercies, acts of compassion; in this context, the comfort of a finite, definite, defined, or final resolution. Ministry means ministration; to minister is to attend in a religious sense to the wants and needs of others, such as giving aid to the sick.
To posit ill ambitions’ sating.
This means “to imagine the satisfying of evil ambitions.”
- To posit – To assume, propose, imagine, or postulate.
- Ill – Here, not the usual colloquial meaning of “sick,” but the older, less common, literary meaning of “evil.”
- Sating – From “to sate,” a literary verb meaning “to satiate” or “to glut.”
- Ambitions’ sating – The grammar here is the gerund (the noun) sating with the possessive ambitions’ = “the sating of ambitions.”
Restive – Resisting control, restless.