Now here might be a poem. I'm posting it not simply because it's recent
(although it is, very) but because my thoughts of late have become very
exercised over questions about the nature of figurative language, and the
antipathy I feel towards what seems to me to be the predominant
'naturalistic' mode that vehicles such as simile and metaphor take.
So my question about my presumed poem is: are the violations of physical
logic that its non-representational comparisons take justified? And, if so,
why?
david bircumshaw
Illumination
There is a bright invisible light
helpless on my forehead
like a fly that has navigated galaxies
with the burden of its own amber.
It is my compassion, beloved.
It wants to drift across the face of all there is
like the one thought of Buddha.
But it is small, but it is a fly,
though transparent as amber.
Your reflection drifts
across its powerless voltage,
its trapped arc
and other shades it permits
to feed it their dark solids
but it is clouded, but it is clear,
and the cloudy reach
of the world turning turns
and dips away
like a lover's shoulder
that wants only sleep.
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