In this post, we have the final segment of the first song. The One is already developing and experiencing more. Some of those experiences are frightening, some exhilarating. All of them are true and actual. In the first two segments of this first song, The One barely came in contact with others; in this last segment, others start to appear, and not always in pleasant ways.
As the Songs of this epic poem unfold, the story becomes closer and closer to an mature way of thinking and seeing, but here, we are dealing with a fresh, new being just beginning to experience and think. Most of the images are metaphors – our old friend – but some images are statements of fact, as The One experiences reality on personal terms.
After you’ve finished this segment of Song 1, you may want to read the Song from the beginning to cement the flow of the life we are getting to know.
Your comments and questions are most welcome, as always. Please “dive in.”
Now locked skintight in long, dimly-lit hall
palest yellow illumines smoky pall
I cannot be still and spend all my time
skittering along the walls of my mind
Sounds trapped in a grave and frightening tunnel
I see shadowy faces – outstretched hands
to catch me if I fall but their cluster
sinks me shrieking, flailing to hard cold floor
My useless arms now sprout fleshy feathers
but they hang too thin for flight and I can
barely hear song-filled sky’s whispering wings
distant fins slipping through night’s fluid rings
Bewildered, I am some thing caught between
I’m no friend to shore — no friend to sea
Only sky’s starred vault casts spangled light
and glorious voices resonate through me
but feeble wings shroud my drooping shoulders
as I doze and dream and sad-stroke the walls
my true heart is not made for weights and chains
but for endless sky -- and lush-liquid night
shadowed sails in weightless ebony flight
Even so, I wake still rooted like some
senseless plant at the mercy of watchers’
wide-peering eyes and probing hands on me
breaking the sweet stillness of my dreaming
I miss the sea wherever it might be
I am smallest and least alone adrift
Now, behind the sound a favoring north wind
promises I’ll soon be free if only
I let them tie a silver string to me
an anxious watcher at the other end
Far into my star-home the thread would stretch
woven of meticulous snowy braid
so I won’t feel it cut me like a blade
Dull yellow light seeps in my half-closed lids
I’m resigned to die at rest not sail chained
Asleep, hidden for later freedom gained
I’ll not leave until I’m free asudden
shooting from this prison hall unfurling
exquisite wings and then hurtling skyward
like the ocean’s ignited cannonball
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some times I re-member I am alive
at sea again, I am a fast-black ship
catching a pure canvas-bellying breeze
foiling the contrary traitorous winds
setting sail for star-nations once again
I’m a black-hulled ship on the broad-backed sea
shunning calm passage – tacking toward eternity
crossing borderless realms with stars and sun
a single song of strong waters on a
long downwind run
Most of the time I am blown far off course
I can’t re-member my intended route
but marvelous things bubble up from dreams
Yet, my song rings faint, frail, full of doubt
The voice-shadow of “not-be” cold and near
So, silent I sink to river’s bottom
send out small roots to hold against currents
How smoothly I lie like a drowned stone
among the other ones hiding like me
In this way I make only faintest sound
lying on river bottom, small and round
while larger louder dark ships overhead
cast lengthening shadows on this river bed
Like a great seed, I lie still in the silt
sprouting roots deep and moist suckling sweet-breasted river-milk
I must grow strong straightaway where I am laid
for causes I feel yet cannot comprehend
except that I have appeared – have been made
I must grow immense now that I am here
by logic mysterious save freshening fear
entrenched vibrations assaulting my ears
I grow for no reason
The sea only a mirror
Explorations:
1. How and in what ways has the one developed and grown in this final part of the first song?
2. What do you make of the repetitive water images in the entire first Song?
3. Likewise, what do you think of the juxtaposition of images of containment/even prison, and their counterparts – freedom and exploration?
Reads like birth to me, perhaps expressed as multi-prism cells in an orgasmic suddenness, something cerebral seeing all directions at once, anticipating, impatient.
ReplyDeleteWoo-Heee! Right on, my friend. So glad the central birth image came across. I was concerned it might be too abstract to interpret. Maybe it is for some, but not for you! Thanks for ferreting out the meaning. JP Savage
Delete1. Increased awareness through infancy and childhood.
ReplyDelete2. The sea of amniotic fluid, but also the realm of unbeing. Did you chose to be?
3. The one desires to fly free but bides its time on the river bottom learning by watching the big hulls.