Farewell
The dream seems lost…
A hug
And then
Maybe it is time
I will go back to the shore
Where
I can throw sand into the sea
Watch the singing waves
From them comes the future
And the dream
Is still far
From being lost
Countless moments in the water
Silhouettes in blue
Where the sky…
And the rings are silent
Within
The Floating Time
KRISTIAN GOLDMUND AUMANN
AUTHOR/MARCH/2011
By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule-
From a wild clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE- out of TIME.
Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the tears that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters- lone and dead,-
Their still waters- still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.
By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,-
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily,-
By the mountains- near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,-
By the grey woods,- by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp-
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls,-
By each spot the most unholy-
In each nook most melancholy-
There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the Past-
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by-
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the Earth- and Heaven.
For the heart whose woes are legion
‘Tis a peaceful, soothing region-
For the spirit that walks in shadow
‘Tis- oh, ’tis an Eldorado!
But the traveller, travelling through it,
May not- dare not openly view it!
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills its King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringed lid;
And thus the sad Soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses.
By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wandered home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.
Edgar Allan Poe
Illustration by Alberto Martini
Take a poem and look very closely into it…the vowels, the letters. Study it closely….It probably can replicate itself (though not easy) you are my eyes. Directing your voice without distraction in it. Sense and feel the difference between the visual informational moments the image, the personality, the personal history, hurt, anger, etc. A separate reality more real than sun on skin, with the indefinite power of wind and stars. Far more reflective than a pond of still water, more substantial than a rock.
Poetry has allowed me to diffuse my fears, express disillusionment, and be heard. To differentiate between what the mind and the eyes see. To love long after the partner is gone, to mourn, to connect tickling and telling the reader the truth. Forget all the rules. Forget about being published. Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. Write for yourself and celebrate writing. It is one of the oldest most sacred connections with self. A ancestral journey through time from your eyes down the arm via the hand and pen onto paper then back through the eyes.
Poetry Reconciles Us to the World. Poetry has always possessed the deeper roots and the larger promise. The arts are not reductive, but seek pattern, order and consistency in the very midst of variety. Poetry may not change the world — much though Marxists insist that it should — but it can enable us to see life whole, with clarity and understanding. The great theatre of the world is written in language, and its poetry reconciles us to the manifest absurdities and cruelties of our natures.
Art can set aside the struggle for individual preeminence, said Schopenhauer, and learn to see life as it is directly given to us through timeless ideas.
Poetry makes the world more visible and can capture ‘wonder.’ Ordering thoughts and ideas, we choose our words with discernment and fit with a sense of proportion. Shadows are brought into the light echoes traced to their origin, muddied streams run clear again. Like following a trail to the summit like tracing a stream to find the source. Words, the travel sometimes level and easy the simple becoming difficult, the difficult easy. Words calming the hearts dark waters: dredging from the depths the proper name of things.
“From the eyes
to the mind
of the pen
down the arm
to the heart
of the hand
in the paper”
© Copyright Tom Sheldon
You may not believe in magic but something very strange is happening at this very moment. Your head has dissolved into thin air and I can see the rhododendrons through your stomach. It’s not that you are dead or anything dramatic like that, it is simply that you are fading away and I can’t even remember your name.”
Leonora Carrington (The Hearing Trumpet)
“There are books so alive that you’re always afraid that while you weren’t reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?”
~Marina Tsvetaeva
