Idea¹

Gemino Abad

Is earth, soil, root
of that I touch most deeply
and call by name --
For, as the word flashes to mind,
there at once, by its light,
what I live through is the very living:
a test, a calling, an uncommon dare.
And everywhere I look, or speak from,
all things begin to surround like sunlight
the sharp living moment at its own place
and time where it achieves, mysteriously,
its own meaningfulness.

With what alphabet shall I
(Eye, the inspector within) unravel
that lightning flash over the scatter of living
to form the single word by which
the world to itself is again made vocable?

Oh, whence the idea?
Is one’s mind single, itinerant Eye
sun to sun,
or is it rather the Universe
shaping through this mind its infinite
possibilities?

And what then the idea’s light?
how does its meaning form by which
its light is cast?
Is there not a greedy void, a darkness
without syllable, by which light
is known?

Or if no idea had flashed,
what might there be athwart
the moment’s sharp thorn
toward its singular rose?
how else might it have been held?

Is it incredible? --
That the mind in love with mysteries
beneath our words’ dream
is the Universe in quest of a language
to shape, like the rose its ardent flower,
its yearning exuberance.
Oh, what weird weather of mystery
unscrolls our skies over those things
and incidents that breathless await
their telling!
Where winds blow but cannot shape
a vowel,
the clouds break and wander hapless
with their alphabet.
It must needs be lightning the word’s
dumb shell to crack.

——

¹ A Makeshift Sun: Stories and Poems (UP Press, 2001): 121-23; In Ordinary Time: Poems, Parables Poetics, 1973-2003 (UP Press, 2004):55-56; Where No Words Break: New Poems and Past (UP Press, 2014): 171-73; rev. 17 July 2018.