‘this invented world’’

... the cloud preceded us

There was a muddy centre before we breathed.

There was a myth before the myth began,

Venerable and articulate and complete.

Wallace Stevens, Towards a Supreme Fiction

Image preceded word.

Etched in deepest brain,

inscribed there in time

before remembered time,

it is elusive, an image which only hints

at truths too precious

to lose in shifting ancient mist,

so fleeting we fear they might be beautiful lies,

not understanding as we struggle thus,

... the cloud preceded us.

The gentle closing of the fontanel

sealed the door to other worlds,

to time when knowing how we began,

with a clarity we'd seldom feel again

was gone - our first life loss,

a separation we have grieved

forever, the not-quite-us-ness of our wanderings

amidst valleys of absent memory

suggesting that, in all we've achieved,

there was a muddy centre before we breathed.

What is this constant search for why,

or how. the rhyme or rune

which ghosts our path?

What soul-companion beckons us to destiny

or death, rejects our claims of innocence,

demands, as compensation for the shortest span

on earth, a propitiation to Olympian gods

who whisper from eons before our birth:

there was a plan,

there was a myth before the myth began.

And now, this moment, grounded in word and metaphor,

in a learned arrangement of symbols,

the search for clarity remains elusive,

heart song still tugs at the edges of recall,

images slip endlessly from our grasp,

our brushes with past life remain heartbreakingly fleet.

We cling to the thought of one eye to see and one to feel.

and question if we need such twinning to find our way,

such balance to make us feel replete,

venerable and articulate and complete.