The Enlightenment

A Poem

In the west, we conceive enlightenment as illumination, as in shining a light on some topic. Hence our historical Enlightenment, a movement of the 18th Century which emphasized reason and progress as alternatives to social and religious convention. We moderns live very much in the shadow of this philosophy—and, increasingly, the backlash against it. In Asia, however, enlightenment conveys a very different sense, almost diametrically opposed to our western concept. To be enlightened is to snuff out the inner flame of awareness, as if one had extinguished the mental illusion which prevents us from seeing clearly.

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Gathering Storm (Florida, 2023)

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The Enlightenment

Awake in the fullness of daylight
we found our eyes unable to see
how plaintive ravens invoking belief
on the brutal arch or cobbled street
would not be so impossibly bright
except for our reasoned clarities.

What point do I mean to impart?
I mean to show how having a point
that drives toward the stem of mind
is a suffering—like a closing poem
which shuts the garden’s iron gate
then loses its key among letters.

You tell me sermons lack all sense
like a blind man describing scenery.
But when did we last listen for hours
until the silence between all sounds
had reached into that rusted word
to caress the unpluckable rose?

Even now, a darkening weather
menaces my windows with thunder.
The wild shutters, in wind upon wind,
hammer the glass like two workmen.
Ah love, be thou ever so vulnerable
as to feel this heavenly terror yet!

For what do you think that petal
sees now, under this driving hail?
How soft its purple enlightenment
beneath the regime of unknowing;
and sharp my extinguishing breath
which fills the air with candle smoke.

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