Monday, April 30, 2012

how inhabited the windy light?



winter solstice, 2010



Small Fantasia for W. B.

Where does spirit live? Inside or outside
Things remembered, made things, things unmade?
What came first, the seabird’s cry or the soul

Imagined in the dawn cold when it cried?
Where does it roost at last? On dungy sticks
In a jackdaw’s nest up in some old stone tower

Or a marble bust commanding the parterre?
How habitable is perfected form?
And how inhabited the windy light?

What was learned from the midwife and the hangman?
What’s the use of a held note or held line
That cannot be assailed for reassurance?

Seamus Heaney


7 comments:

  1. In your photo I feel the life of light, the love of light. I do not know why everything happens at once, and time must parse it out. Or why we need, and want, words for the soul's cries.

    Just now a jay screeches.

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    1. Ruth: sometimes i think that is why we need time -- to keep everything from happening at once -- without time, it would all be simply one burst of light and done -- we need time in order to know ....

      a jay screeches ... this moment feels eternal in your telling it .... the wave of sound still overflows the little throat, even if you and i and even the throat itself have moved on :-)

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  2. For some reason this poem and photo made me think about yesterday morning. I was getting into my car to head to work at 4:30 in the morning and I stopped dead in my tracks. I realized there was a great silence around me. I mean no birds chirping, only the distant sound of cars on a highway humming. At the end of the road a light seem to cast it's light so you could make out some trees and bushes near by. That moment made me feel like sound was a sleep and waiting to wake up with the sun.

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    1. Liz: it sounds like a truly beautiful moment of recognition ... i think the silence is always there -- we just have to listen hard for it sometimes ...

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  3. so beautiful that i am rendered speechless... words are now useless, a gesture maybe, a touch, could speak more from within this light...

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    1. Roxana: we look for the silence, you and i, desiring that light that dissolves the words ... i listened, and nothing spoke, and that seemed right ....

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  4. nice title choice, what a wonderful line. what a gorgeous picture, the branches seem as though they are trying to fly off like birds.

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