Sunday, December 4, 2011

Experiment II




  I found this passage the day after I finished this poem: “That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world” John 1:9.  Note: capitalization matters! 
Experiment II
And now a search comes upon the poem,
A search already possessed by what it searches for:
Floundering in the hallucination of its darkness,
Illuminated by the Light it tries to create.

(You are this Light
That illuminates the darkness of the search
For a light that it seeks to make
In place of the One by which it searches.)

It turns to the poem for guidance
Or amusement or distraction,
In its effort to create the light
It assumes itself to be.

(But this end that its ideal proclaims
Lies disobeyed by the means prescribed:
No search could find the light it tries to create
Unless it surrenders itself to the present from which Light shines)

If the search stepped into this Light
And ceased its attempt to replace it,
As if to own or dominate it,
Its light would burn.

(Here the search abolishes itself
As it ends its violent struggle:
As light-in-Light it finds its way to peace
And surrenders its hallucination of control to truth.)

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