_______________ Curated Lines Publishing _________________________

To discern 
           our place 
To commune 
To see 
           beyond our close shadow of death 
To focus 
           my poet mind 
I need direction 
           a qibla 
Or some beads to tell 
           to take refuge from my life: 
A candle flame 
Only the candle 
Flame 
Flickering 
A journey into quietude 
            begins 
Into that silence 
             comes tranquillity 
And the absence of words 
Serenity beyond words: 
              I become sentient - 
              conscious of only this moment in the flame of a grain of sand 
                           Of the sun shining through golden autumn trees 
                          Of the clearing mists 
                          dissolving in the valley and above the hills 
                          giving way to rain that fills the sky 
                         so that the branches droop, dripping 
                         as the wind rustles the upper boughs 
                         and drops spatter on the window glass. 
                        Of love 
Peace 
Perhaps, now, I am no longer physical 
              But have become a spiritual being 
              having a human experience 
Writing 
              And in the writing 
                                the words return

Originally published in Mostly Welsh (Y Lolfa 2019, pp.51-52)

Notes

Moliere: “Without knowledge life is no more than a shadow of death”
qibla: Spiritual direction (the direction of Mecca)
Zen Master, Hung Chih, writes of serene reflection in which one forgets all words and realizes – is aware only of – Essence.
c.f. Blake: Auguries of Innocence: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand…”
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but…” Generally attributed to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, a French idealist philosopher and Jesuit priest

There are about a dozen poems quoted in The Dark Trilogy that are not published in Mostly Welsh. Here is one of them!

The Interface

Books make visible the writer’s soul
Which bleeds its angst by pen:
Spread thin across life’s whited bowl
A thin red stain of madeleine

Books may offer us an author’s eye
That ensnares the reader within its brail
Or should writers light the reader’s sky
And tear apart the shadowy veil?

Books will hold the writer’s thought
And bridge the gap twixt pen and readers
A mystic link so carefully wrought
To blazon unicorns among the cedars

The writer’s flame burns bright with drama
As ashes from a tortured mind combust
For in the writing there must be karma:
Finding peace in a little heap of livid dust
With thanks to Proust, Baudelaire, Auden and di Lampedusa