The angel, immobile,
Serenely gazes from her rest
In the well of an old Underwood Number 5
While I try to connect to Sylvia Plath
Find my own dear words
And avoid the black dark.
If I am to believe
The Four Noble Truths
Then my practice, the process, is all
Yet I cannot help but feel
The undertow of time
The burden of ignorance.
When she speaks with me
All is multilayered meaning,
Possibility and exploration.
When I am alone, the judge,
Renders all immaterial, fading
No true bastion of immortality.
If these words, my words
Are no more fixed in human hearts
Than the fleeting whispers of the wind,
Then I have nothing more
Than time, alone in a room,
Under the angel’s ceramic visage, reflecting nothing.
love your thoughts on words…
cheers,
enjoy poetry potluck.
🙂
Thanks Jingle, I’m looking forward to reading more great potluck entries.
Love the complexities… very thought provoking piece.
Thanks, I look forward to reading your work.
AHhh!!! So beautiful and emotive…
loved your lines..
‘Yet I cannot help but feel
The undertow of time
The burden of ignorance’
ॐ नमः शिवाय
Om Namah Shivaya
http://shadowdancingwithmind.blogspot.com/2011/07/whispers-memories-to-live-by.html
Thank you, how lovely! I look forward to reading the other potluck entries.
The ending, perhaps, is what all writers and artists feel. And fear.
Nice thought provoking piece. Thank you I enjoyed reading it very much
Thank you, I love to get the thoughts flowing, it’s how we enter a bigger dialogue through the focal point of a poem.
I know exactly what you’re saying. Sometimes it feels as if we are throwing dry grass into a strong wind. Is anybody out there? I really like the way you put the thoughts into words.
Thank you, great metaphor.
It’s that moon and the yew tree, with its friggen “blackness and silence” that refutes every end of the word. I think a poet has to decide just how divine the words still are, how much they suffice, and act accordingly. As if. Because. In lieu of. Otherwise they just invoke what Roethke called a “self-infected lair” – a black and silent place indeed.
I love what you say about the divinity of the words. Do they still invoke, transform, mean something that you can build a foundation upon?
Call me a tradttionalist, but I go with Jung and Campbell et al that the myths are deeply down and inside us, and that carved words (or any other artistic media) is the contemporary equivalent of faith and communion. A rich enough lode for me, and all of its down there, waiting to come out. Gospel of St.Thomas, “If you bring out what is inside you, what you bring out will save you. If you fail to bring out what is inside you, what you fail to bring out will destroy you.” — No fossilization of faith there, two millennia later — at least for any artist.
Brendan, I agree with you, Campbell, and Jung. I compose, write, paint, etc. as a spiritual practice. It’s amazing you quote the Gospel of St. Thomas, it is in my studio and I just read it to my brother last week to encourage him to write poetry!
I love Sylvia Plath she’s an inspiration for me as well. Amazing poem!
Thank you, I look forward to catching up with your posts as I’m a subscriber.