The wordless feelings of the soul catch light Like fire,like diamonds, like the dust of stars With their fire they penetrate the night
To expression, they the mind incite To where the words may open and be clear The wordless feelings of the soul catch light
Expression by its methods brings delight We see the molten universe desire With great fires , with wonder, what work’s wrought?
Like a flock of geese in happy flight The heart of unknown worlds is not a liar The sense of feeling souls will bring us light
Of the thunder and the lion we note The natural world with its own might conspires With its being it permeates the night
So our hearts and souls does love devour Never cornered never shall love cower The wordless feelings of the soul catch light With such brilliance, can we feel the night?
David’s latest post is of his poetry and this is well worth visiting this. He is very accomplished and full of feeling.
A President’s Death
Poor Professor Johnson, I pitied him–his deep feelings. A dignified man, a scholar, Teacher of eighteenth Century British poetry, Couldn’t speak but to Say go home, there would Be no class today. On the subway someone Had a portable radio. No passenger speaking, Everyone listening in shock, The tinny, crackling Radio voice telling us over And over as though we Wouldn’t believe him, that The President I felt I knew Though he was rich and I A student struggling with Illness and poverty, Had been shot. Professor Johnson went home and read Alexander Pope’s masterful Couplets through tears.
But metaphors are not merely things to be seen beyond. In fact, one can see beyond them only by using other metaphors. It is as though the ability to comprehend experience through metaphor were a sense, like seeing or touching or hearing, with metaphors providing the only ways to perceive and experience much of the world. Metaphor is as much a part of our functioning as our sense of touch, and as precious.
Two whole worlds. One small cut. One little chink. Hard to find. Very,very hard. One small place Where a very little cat Could slip right through The geometrician ‘s cut. Cat could slip right through. Just,slip straight through. Joining it’s own reflection On the opposite side. The mirror’s other side.
And if I caught that tail, If I caught her little tail, She could pull me through, She could pull me through, So she and I too We’d be on the other side, The wrong way round, On the opposite side.
So when you looked in, If you looked in, You would see me there, Looking out at you, From the opposite side. From the opposite side. And the cat beside Looking very small, Very,very small; But very,very real. How do you think you’d feel, If I was looking out, Staring at you From the opposite side?
I can’t get back. I can’t find Riemann’s cat and without that pussy cat I can’t find Riemann’s cut. I think I’m in a trap. I cannot find that cat. So she can’t find the cut To get me back, She can’t bring me back To where I was before.
Oh,how queer, To have two of me in here. I hope I’ll get on well With my other self, Behind the looking glass. No one looking in, But two are staring out. From that other world.
I am looking out, I’m looking out To see if you are there. One of you’s with me That makes the total three. Oh,dear me, I should not have grabbed Little pussy’s tail. I didn’t really know Where she meant to go.
“Where have you been? Where do you think you’ve been To get so filthy black, And where’s your pussy cat?” She never came back. Never came back From the opposite side. Mammy thought I’d lied. I don’t tell lies, But I can see my cat Staring out at me. Staring out at me From the other side. From the opposite side Of my looking glass. My lovely looking glass Has trapped my tiny cat On the opposite side. On the opposite side On the other side
Homer’s tales were laced with important lessons for his contemporaries on the “proper” ways to think and behave. He taught (or reminded) them how to properly treat a stranger or a relative, face danger and hardship, worship, and so on. Similarly, the fables of Aesop and Da Vinci ranged in subject matter from comments upon the quirks of human nature to considering the meaning of existence.
From … Therapeutic metaphors :
Helping others through the looking glass”‘ by David Gordon
I saw you on the pavement with your old brown dog You were shabby,poor,ragged, Sat on your tartan rug. You had water for the dog, You hugged him and you sang, But the people walked on by, And no-one looked at you. No-one looked at you.
But you still sang your song. And you sent me so much love It crossed from eye to eye. I felt it coming in.
I heard that you had died, Though you were only thirty three. Only thirty three. I wonder,where’s your dog? I felt our souls had touched, You gave to me so much As I wandered in my grief Through the roads and round the streets. In your glance, you touched my heart. I felt love swimming through, From you right into me.
Will you come again? I see all these dim, grey men Who cut your benefits To give more wealth to few; So that the needle’s eye, which is waiting when we die, is forgotten, for they want protection for their wealth.
I wish that beggar man would come back here again. I liked to hear his songs But I can’t recall the tunes; Maybe I’ll write songs myself, That’s the highest sort of wealth Our creativity Is a path to dignity. Come back.beggar man Wherever have you gone? Wherever have you gone?
“I will call the world a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read—I will call the human heart the horn Book used in that School—and I will call the Child able to read, the Soul made from that school and its hornbook. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!” Keats
“When we look into Keats’s expressions of conflict between
imagination and reality we can see the roots of this conflict in the
problem of identity. Keats wrote about the sunset, the sparrow, the
mythological figure as if he had lost his identity in the object. He
experienced these identifications sometimes with a sense of discovery
and sometimes with fear or irritability. Eventually, Keats began to see
that his identity would not be maddened by his imagination and could
be strengthened by it. He realized, in other words, “that a not inconsiderable increase in psychical efficiency” can result “from a disposition
which in itself is perilous.” In-the four years we know Keats as a letter
writer and a poet, we can see the development of his capacity for
retaining a sense of identity even when seized by powerful or seductive
visions. This is the development–the turning of a weakness into a
strength, both as artist and as man-that accounts for many apparent
contradictions in Keats’s thought. The language of negative capability
has been difficult because it suggests a puzzling oxymoron- a negative
and a positive. The figure presents two aspects of a dual process, the
first part of which, in its partial renunciation of control, can be felt as a
negative, while the second, or alternating, state recreates and is felt as a
capability. The creative process in some of its operations posed
dangers for Keats’!; identity. But by the spring of 1819, the period of the
great odes, there appears a new strength in the second aspect of
negative capabilily imagination”
How my heart sings 