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.
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. -




A beaut. What med said