This is it then - logos
of the human
pulse: the cards
mis-shuffled, the pack mis-dealt
(shuffled and dealt by
knaves to threadbare kings)
No spirit of unearthly
numen,
no Icarus on
sun-blenched, sea-drenched wings;
rather a Sicilian gambit,
fated
to falter stumbling into
some Fool’s Mate.
In the beginning was the Word, mis-spelled.
Imagine a Neolithic troglodyte,
armed with stick and
tinder, crouching supine
at the cave-door,
witnessing a full moon
in full eclipse. The
uncreated night
yields only to bats’
wings, the distant tune
of courting eagles in an
eeriness
demoniacal shapes of
superstitiousness.
So stick and tinder
kindle earthly fire:
but it is nothing; less
than the nothing
of primordial nothing in
whose dark
systole-diastole the
pulse is formed.
So eyes stare awe-struck,
eyelids tense as wire.
The black corona passes,
and is born
into a blazing aureole; a
spark -
and God is fashioned on
an eagle’s wing.
So much for the primitive
conception.
Ours is no less
primitive, though ours is
magnified, exalted,
reasoned by minds
too profound to fathom
their own shallow
simpleness; empirical
deceptions,
truths that are but the
apotheosis
of uncertainty; all this
we swallow,
needing to give credence
- and remain blind.
When the black corona of
ignorance
blazes into the bright
aureole of
knowledge, we sleep
secure. Stick and tinder
kindle earthly fire;
savant shamans dance
ecstatic in the orgiastic
rites
of certainty. But fire
burns to cinder.
When we too are eclipsed,
what light above
will grant us sleep on
future uncreated nights?
"The Pulse" is published in "Welcome To My World, Selected Poems 1973-2013", The Argaman Press. Click here to purchase the book.
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Copyright © 2014 David Prashker
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The Argaman Press
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