Tuesday 9 February 2010

In a Dark Time, the Eye Begins to See






(All photographs by Anvita Lakhera.)

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

- In a Dark Time by Theodore Roethke

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I liked this a lot:
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

nice pics too. where was the last one??
- window siller :-)

Anvita Lakhera said...

Just 'discovered' Theodore Roethke and realized what I'd been missing.

The last one is from our apartment in Bombay...I know, I know there's a risk of this becoming a running "joke" between us :D

Anonymous said...

you mean about moving across cities and continents....
in that case, I must say...
to the woman, who has lived in one all her life; sometimes of "tradition" and sometimes of love, it is a fascinating run.
~window siller :-)

Anvita Lakhera said...

Actually I meant a joke between you and me in which you ask where was this picture taken and I always answer our home :)

But if we are talking of travel/running as a means of escape I think of Issac Asimov who loved closed spaces and hated to fly and still wrote the Foundation Series!