Sunday, 17 April 2016

The light


They say
a light shines in the darkness 
which the dark can't comprehend

They say 
she lived her life
like a candle in the wind

They say
life's but a walking shadow
until that brief candle is put out

And all the time the suggestion is  
we are all lights
divided by an abyss of darkness perhaps,
occasionally visible to each other,
but otherwise alone and lost,

But they are wrong.
There is no darkness, only light,
everywhere and always,
light.
There are closed eyes, 
that open twice, 
at the beginning and the end of life;
and in between there is a dream
when we imagine we can turn away
from what is already within us. 

1 comment:

  1. I altered this slightly ... there was a middle section I took out to make the piece simpler and more direct.

    This has become a separate poem:

    The mountaineers

    And they stretch,
    they reach out
    each from the separate summit
    of their high conquest,
    aching to touch each other so badly
    their hands summon strange blossoms
    from the ground far below,
    strange swelling bulbs of light
    on stems of dust
    rising from soil
    rich with powdered and anonymous bone
    as if they could simply extend their hand
    from the mountain top on which they dwell
    and reap this stroboscopic crop
    and make of it a nuclear bouquet
    with which to woo each other.

    ReplyDelete