Correspondences                                                          Page 52

Perfume stirs and expands the senses, opens imagination and makes present

what is absent: the touch and fragrance of children's skin, the high, sweet

sound of oboes, green meadows and open spaces. "Others, corrupt, rich,

exultant, wild" also have in them the "expansion of things infinite". The dark

scent of something corrupt, like the scent of death or decay, mingles with the

scent of wild, exultant life. A trace of perfume carries in its presence-in-  

absence the span and space of life and death expanding into the infinite:

If the finite and the infinite are regarded as merely antithetical the

infinite is limited by the finitude against which it stands The finite is

not merely other than and opposed to the infinite but is actually an

"interior" dimension of infinitude....finitude and infinitude are neither

simply opposed nor mutually exclusive. To the contrary they enact a

ceaseless play in which each becomes itself through the other.⁶⁵

The play between finite things and "things infinite" is symbolised in the poem as

a combination of perfumes that "sing the senses' and the soul's delight".

Perfume touches our bodies, enters our pores, vanishes and leaves its traces all

around. It is a powerful symbol of divine presence in creation, touching and

entering the "flesh" of the world. The whole of creation is permeated with the

fragrance of incarnation.

The divine is forever embodied....Incarnation... is not a once-and-for-

all event, restricted to a specific time and place and limited to a

particular individual.⁶⁶

If the divine is forever embodied, the Otherness of God can never be

oppositional difference, or far away or even "Wholly" Other. The divine is in

"the kind flesh (in) love and simple sight" (C.P. p.49), in the intricate and

erratic relationships weaving everything in creation together.

⁶⁵ Taylor, Erring p.114

⁶⁶ Taylor, Erring p.104