Poems Out Of Netherland

Three poems

I

Here, alive, a posthumous existence
In the presence of the absolute hour,
When time is memory, and the mind cleared
Of a life's sulfurous imaginings,
My bare bed has become a bare platform
In the windless dark of the outside space.
Here, I can see when I open my eyes
A light flickering in the far reaches,
Dancing among shadows in the darkness,
Gone as soon as they have been extinguished.
I hear the quite insistent trickling
Of water emptying into an iron bath,
And the wind blowing under the dark door.
What did we know of terror before now?

II

Here in the unbound space of blurs and shapes,
Cradled, as it were, in complete inertia,
Something of darkness moves in the darkness.
Now that the sun has gone, the dials have ceased
To cast a shadow, revealing the hour.
Remember the numbers from one to twelve
And the giant zero of the white clock face,
The nullity hidden but always there
In the days and nights when time would run out,
Before this inscrutable endlessness,
And the voices raised and the questions asked,
'But out from what, and for whom, and from where?'
This before or after your time, perhaps.
Memories are the tokens of our loss.

II

Let us return to the question of place.
In an eternal world, there is no place.
The dune is a mountain made out of sand.
Rivers are simply channels of water.
Clouds, as always, remain anonymous,
As in the eternal cosmos of time,
Though mad poets have had them wandering
And the once insane have had them talking.
Here, clouds take a shape and never alter.
Great wheel of river rotates on the earth;
A mile away, I was drenched by its spray;
Now it rises supportless, miles and miles
Up into space, a giant aqueous mill,
There, spinning in the darkness soundlessly.

Reviews

[Ken e Bujold]

interesting read here John, not sure what I think just yet, except that the themes are deep enough and of a complexity that thought and rereading is a necessity. I am quite attracted to the image of "the giant zero of the white clock face" the idea of nullification as well as, perhaps oddly, colonialism come to mind. the 3rd question "and from where" is also one I pose for myself all the time, so its one I will keep in mind when I read the work again, in a few days. I find time is a great tool in finding perspective on works I sense a deeper meaning in

Ken

[John]

Thanks Ken. I have a sequence of six or so poems under the title Netherland, which I will post as soon as they are finished. Hopefully the sequence will shed light on or elucidate the theme in the poem you have commented on.