A micron feeling picks its way along
On the snail’s narrow, wary path,
Merely a fine point inching
In the saint’s laden stare.
The body poised on needle point
Is the mind’s dark matter
Like the cosmic lens
You see the far stars far better.
It’s paucity all out of breath.
A feather balanced on edge
Stands quivering from windmilling fall
Like a wraith on the mind’s tightrope.
The nerves keep tautening
Until they are gleaming white
Lethal like fresh slivers of glass
Chilling in the hard sunlight.
1 comment:
Albert Einstein proved in 1919 that gravity bends light rays. Dark matter constitutes 90% of the mass of the universe and definitely has the ability to bend rays. What happens now if dark matter blocks the sight of a star? Nothing. It bends the light coming from the star down to our eyes like a double-convex lens so we can see it. It’s as if the dark matter doesn’t exist and the star is there visible without any obstacle. Yeah, you can see the far stars far better. This is an everyday experience of human beings. The cosmic metaphor in the poem implies that what seems obvious in our day-to-day experience might well not be as clear in reality.
This is a poem of a momentary perception, (A feather balanced on edge,) unique to the mind and body. The mind is drawn back from its expansion and concentrated to a point where one suddenly discovers the strange ingredients of their universe which never seemed there before; one’s existence gets shuddered at the discovery and they look incredulously at themselves.
This unique experience needs concentration from the experiencer (it’s OK if I invent a new word); so much so that time gets contracted and condensed as we see in the first stanza. The mind draws itself back to the ultimate until it gets beyond the external world, chilling in the hard sunlight.
The poem is nothing like the poet has written so far. It demands a much closer look. I couldn’t think of anything though I kept coming back to it again and again. This much as of now. More later. Hoping some responses so I can get some help to untie the knots. Cheers!
Shourabh Pothobashi
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