In a Dark Time

 

Yaroslav Gerzhedovich

 

In a Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;   

I hear my echo in the echoing wood—

A lord of nature weeping to a tree.

I live between the heron and the wren,   

Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul

At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!   

I know the purity of pure despair,

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.   

That place among the rocks—is it a cave,   

Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!

A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,   

And in broad day the midnight come again!   

A man goes far to find out what he is—

Death of the self in a long, tearless night,   

All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.   

My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,   

Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?

A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.   

The mind enters itself, and God the mind,   

And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

Theodore Roethke

This poem has been on my mind a long time. Most of us are put off by poems we don't understand. It feels like failure to not grasp what's being said. And yet, I wonder if good poems (it doesn't do to respect a poem too much, like anything, there are differences in quality) aren't purposely intended to be wrestled with. Aren't they a questioning, a puzzling-out-loud? It seems to me that I can enter a poem and walk around, look through its rooms, pick up an object here, wonder why it's there, try sitting in a chair - no, it doesn't quite suit, look out the window at the view from here. The poem seems to be a living contender, an arrangement of ideas I talk to, and who talk back. A construction that either stands when shaken, or falls flat.

 

So I wrestle with the poem. That first line "In a dark time, the eye begins to see" gets me immediately. Isn't that just how our eyes adjust to darkness? It takes time, but slowly, we begin to make out the edges of things, the shapes of familiar objects - that's the garage, there's the fence-line, oh, the pine tree and the gate-latch. At this moment in life, that line alone (never mind the rest of the poem) captures my experience. I am trying to make out familiar shapes in the darkness. I'm fumbling around, not sure what I bumped into, but, oh yes, I see now - that was here before, but I didn't recognize it. 

 

"What's madness but nobility of soul/ At odds with circumstance?" I'm chewing on that one. 

 

"I know the purity of pure despair/ My shadow pinned against a sweating wall." Isn't it remarkable how an image can perfectly embody a feeling? It's as if there is another language out there, or an incarnation for each thought and state of mind. Maybe that's what poets are doing - fumbling through a dark alphabet- forest, searching for a familiar shape to bring back with them into the light? 

 

What does "the mind enters itself" mean?

 

And isn't it so true, "A man goes far to find out what he is."?

 

And then, even though I can't explain why, "the edge is what I have" is dead-on accurate. Maybe it's that I am finally making out the lines of certain objects in the darkness - not the entirety, certainly not the whole.No, the edge is what I have.

Well, it's a beginning.

 

 

 

First Steps, Brancaster

Nicholas Hely Hutchinson

First Steps, Brancaster

This is the day to leave the dark behind you
Take the adventure, step beyond the hearth,
Shake off at last the shackles that confined you,
And find the courage for the forward path.
You yearned for freedom through the long night watches,
The day has come and you are free to choose,
Now is your time and season.
Companioned still by your familiar crutches,
And leaning on the props you hope to lose,
You step outside and widen your horizon.

After the dimly burning wick of winter
That seemed to dull and darken everything
The April sun shines clear beyond your shelter
And clean as sight itself. The reed-birds sing,
As heaven reaches down to touch the earth
And circle her, revealing everywhere
A lovely, longed-for blue.
Breathe deep and be renewed by every breath,
Kinned to the keen east wind and cleansing air,
As though the blue itself were blowing through you.

You keep the coastal path where edge meets edge,
The sea and salt marsh touching in North Norfolk,
Reed cutters cuttings, patterned in the sedge,
Open and ease the way that you will walk,
Unbroken reeds still wave their feathered fronds
Through which you glimpse the long line of the sea
And hear its healing voice.
Tentative steps begin to break your bonds,
You push on through the pain that sets you free,
Towards the day when broken bones rejoice

Malcolm Guite



“This is the day.”
“The day has come.”
“Now is your time.” 

Walking into freedom, into healing, into a new season – with nature encouraging and welcoming – who wouldn’t want to respond to that invitation?! Who wouldn’t want to step outside?

Probably the best incentive to get some fresh air I’ve ever come across.

Grass

Sunchaser Fine Art and Photography

Grass

Grass basks greedily in the sun

As light penetrates each vein

Saturating the stem in the sheath.

Grass contains every gradation of green:

Loves both fiery sun and drenching rain;

Tugs the watcher downwards, underneath

Grass to crushing earth and stone.

Still the watcher comes to watch again,

To see the grass caress the gravel path.

Alan Bold

There are miracles underfoot. Even this carpet that we walk over, this living, breathing sprawl of green. A few of the recent poems have had similar movement –  up from under – “Listen” by Iain Crichton Smith, and “here’s to opening and upward” by e.e.cummings. This poem by contrast takes us down. Underneath! The place where everything begins. In the dark, in the imagination, in the heart. All the longing, the straining, the desire for light and the infusing of hope ferment here, they awaken and stir us with a yearning for something more. The poem reminds us that life begins in darkness, the seed buried  - how amazing that this should be where hope originates. And it made me think as well - these are not "new" plants, not at all, these are resurrection plants, each blade of grass a descendant of the grass of Eden. And we also, are resurrection people, sons and daughters of Eden, carrying the hope of the first garden with us, however dark life may seem.