Thursday, 7 January 2010

The poet and the Upanishads

A night at the turn of the year
it was
when a poet had a dream -
a dream
for lack of a word.

The dreamed
and disembodied voice
instructed
the slumbering bard

to seek the truth
in the Upanishads.


And so
on his couch he lay
face to face
with a peering down moon

a moon in a window pane

a moon in a star-studded
bright-belted
sky

a moon above the peaks
of the snowy mountains

even above Orion.

And on the moon
and on the voice
the poet mused.


Had the moon
the voice
as it had seemed to him

to order
then
the sleeping mind?

_____________
gw 2010

7 comments:

  1. good one again - happy new year Gwilym
    john

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  2. Lovely poem Gwilym - it has a kind of sparseness - as though the teller is still half in dreamland.
    Also has a touch of the Rubyiat about it I think.

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  3. I enjoyed this. "Bright belted sky"... what a great image.

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  4. Cheers Jon, och aye the Hogmanay!

    Sparker, Weaver, AM, thanks for the lovely comments!

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  5. As a result of the various comments - I felt compelled (or is it inspired?) to edit on the hoof. Poem now owes a little something to Wordsworth. So maybe it's better?

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  6. George Szirtes kindly reminds me that W B Yeats was interested in the Upanishads. I shall duly pursue Yeats.
    Many thanks to you, George.

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