The light can not hold forever
and a nightwashed blue awaits
the reprise of the void.
In a world gone backwards,
with violets cupping air in their tender petals,
purple passion shrinking,
by remembering that all came from nothing,
there is nothing to be lost.
Gone go the strivings, the voices,
the thunderbolts from high, the
notes that follow our fetal condition
and sound with an ever-mounting urgency:
yet
this trap-door is far from suicidal
if you let your self dissolve into dust.
It's rare to see grace -
a reed that moves with the wind -
yet I've seen it in human form but thrice:
my grandfather, arranging to sit before he
learned how to fall, and, his son,
my uncle, whose laughter makes
the inanimate glint and the animate twinkle.
Bipeds bustle but I see no meaning in the rest
those who insist that (no) they won't make the best
of what coil is left because (yes) their best
years are still ahead of them, as if,
through this invocation, time can and will be stilled.
Kyoto-sensei fills out this sonatic trio:
he once said, upon turning sixty,
he only lived now for soft sips of sake,
warmed, looking out from the farmhouse
whose construction calloused his grandfather's hands,
as snowflakes settled on the ground.
Now, watching through fogging windows,
this thought is a shooting star,
as the night snow crosses the (actual) sky,
fluttering to earth,
glinting and burning on the way down.
May all have the strength to live star-like
and may all find courage
to allow the light to fade
thinks the one who smiles, sits,
and sips in gathering imitation
as a white blanket puts soil to sleep.
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2 comments:
I love how the blue tones (blue, violet, nightwashed, purple- passions)are asserted in the first stanza, especially, and are implied, implicitely, throughout the remainder of the piece.
Is there any way to impose that darkening wash in the rest of the poem, without it being overly done? You've woven "sky" imagery, the "fetal condition" imagery, which intimates "water" and of course the "twinkle" as in the twinkle of stars in a night's sky (a lovely accompaniment to "inanimate glint and twinkle representative of snow), also, the "falling snow" and what is MORE blue, but "fogging windows" which I imagine is at dusk.
Arrange or spread out the literal blue notes (the colors) more explicitely throughout, perhaps?
Love the recurrance of stars and the dramatic contrast to blue-black tapestry of night's sky with the last arresting image of the poem: white blanket.
You've gone full circle: first line, "The light..." to last line, "white blanket." Nice cyclical technique.
I have lots more notes if you're interested.
Also, "dust" very snow-like...maybe using "ash" would compliment the "glinting and burning on the way down" (my favorite image...because, that is EXACTLY how I think of snow ... as burning) and the snow echoes the gravity and dying embers of a falling star -- you're implying that snow IS refuse from stars.
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