Poetry Blog No 126 Afternoon Road

AFTERNOON ROAD

This poem is framed as a reflection or contemplation and it is more about asking a question than making a dogmatic pronouncement- well. at least that was my intention. What I want to ask is whether we have left some valuable insights behind in the enthusiasm for sensory observation and rationalism that in some ways characterised the 18th century. Of course, the movement often called the "Enlightenment" was a complex phenomenon. For example, many early scientists, including Kepler and Newton were vitally interested in subjects that today would be called "spiritual". Moreover, many of the great achievements of modern times, not only technologically but also socially, can be seen as an outflow of the "Enlightenment". However, I wonder whether other valuable insights that could have been developed further were lost or obscured.

An engraving of the mysterious Count of St Germain by Nicolas Thomas made in 1783, after a painting. Voltaire called him (sarcastically?) - A man who knows everything and never dies. 

AFTERNOON ROAD

A white- and westward-slanted sun,

its shattering of yellow light

through the pine tree needles,

darkly bunching,

and the undisciplined,

leaf-rousing air,

make me of a mood to sing

a wistful elegy for vanished wanderers.

I amble down afternoon's road-

the feel of country gravel.

Free sight, the breathing quiet,

leave thought to rove,

to muse on far-past folk,

of secrets sealed in silence:

of women wise in herbal lore

with soft, unspoken feeling for

the seasons' sacred ceremony,

affinities, antipathies, known only to

noumenal sight,

the rhythmic life of world

and powers that wax and wane

by cyclic moon's degree;

of students of lost alchemy,

the fires of forgotten chambers,

with small world and the great,

in qualities related,

the spirit of the matter;

for thus transmuting inner elements,

base metal into gold;

of storytellers and the singers,

the players of the tales of soul,

inspirited in imaged form;

the dawn of deeper light,

of time guides working through

the self-effacing culture fight.

And contemplating their forgotten paths,

in mellowed day's late light,

it seems they passed along

a meandering, afternoon road

towards obfuscating

enlightenment's night.

Did they listen into nature's song?

Did they gaze upon

the golden signpost to the sun?