I
black
and deep
uncertain
and daunting
narrowed
and airless
rays
of love melt the shell
an
irresistible force stills the mind
warmth
makes the heart glow
it’s
the far-reaching felicity of the self
that
is and will always be and shall never fade
not
from this world but forever allied forever united
II
a
black hole
a
black nothingness
it is
not
it
does not exist
it
does not sense
it is
unfeeling, in airless space, unseeable ,though in peace
trying
to touch it lightly
to
embrace it
to
stroke it
to
sense it
I
cannot, it is not,I will not
I will
not!
too
black?
too
empty?
too
cold?
too
vulnerable?
no
tears, to melt the shell
no
pain to be felt
no
longing to warm it up
nothing
III
sad
without knowing why
groundless
void
no
goal, no way, nothing.
I
ReplyDeleteI’ve left some doors open for your poem since you posted it here a few days ago. Your poem humbles me for I cannot approach it with what I know.
We are here at some extreme confines; confines of the human soul which resembles the confines of the universe; some very far and unfamiliar place; you call it airless space.
The title naturally leads me to a cosmological analogy: the black hole. Black holes are these places in space where whatever light penetrates them can no longer be perceived or come out, in a way it becomes captive. It is still shinning as it is in its nature to shine but now it is hidden in dark recesses where no one can see it.
The light that travels into these black holes doesn’t die, it simply disappears from our view, is no longer visible to the eye.
II
It is the light resting in the dark. It is the light restoring itself in the dark. It is a light sleeping before renewing its journey through space where the outer and the inner merge.
Invisible, it still shines. Invisible, it still glows. Yet it is a light so much in retreat, so far away from the field where our senses normally operate that it seems to be more of a ‘black nothingness’ than anything else.
This light that is hiding in the black hole seems infinitely far yet travelling with the mind-blowing speed it does it reaches us in no time when:
rays of love melt the shell
an irresistible force stills the mind
warmth makes the heart glow
it’s the far-reaching felicity of the self
Rays of love make the heart glow and it’s the far reaching felicity of the self.
III
Without the journey through the darkness, without opening up to the dark side of our heart we cannot let the true light of the self shine through.
Our maturtion comes when we allow for our light to travel through the dark and the dark is just the unknown.
In an old Zen text written over a millennium ago, Hokkyu Zan Maye, we read the following: dawn is not bright, midnight is true light.
And all the mystics have voiced the same thing: the true light of the self is in retreat, it is in hiding and we need to travel far and go through many trials to reach it. This light is in retreat because we live in a world where everything is easily corrupted, becomes manipulated, manageable, good for consumption and entertainment.
There is something essential about the nothingness in your poem. It is from this nothingness that the divine and all things emerge and this nothingness is another name for the unknown.
The saddens you are revealing here is perhaps our deep sense of longing to reconnect with the ‘felicity of the self’, with the true light that is hiding inside us.
It is our original nature that is calling us to wake up.
Maybe sadness can be a blessing when we see it as a movement of the heart calling its own light from the black hole.