YELLOW MOON
Besides being a legitimate medium for the expression of purely
personal emotion, I believe poetry can play an important role in our
perception of our own humanity. Between the vision of the human being
as merely an economic entity in the purely materialistic endeavour of
modern capitalism (that seems nowadays to consist largely in making
rich people richer at the expense of everyone else) and the
biological objectivism of modern science that seeks to reduce the
human to a bio-mechanical set of chemical processes lies the actual
experience of living.
This is not to claim that material science and economics do not
have useful roles to play in human affairs, it is merely to note that
they have little to say about the actual experience of being a human
being. It is this, I believe, where poetry is useful for speaking of
the experience of being human. For instance, the human experience of
colour and vision is not actually captured by speaking about the
biological mechanisms or the physical electromagnetic “vibrations”
that are spoken of by a science obsessed with the quantitative. Nor
is aided by discussions on design to make products appealing to the
“consumer”. For if we never contemplate our actual basic
experiences and possibilities, I believe, we run the risk of
forgetting our own humanity.
YELLOW MOON
Half-lidded
eye of slumber,
Far-spying
on the dream,
Late,
silence-riding world,
The
yellow-rising moon
Now
silhouettes a single,
Broad,
distant skyline tree.
What
beauty's stolen by the eye:
What
artistry of wide creation
Our
casual vision takes for free.
What
brush could brave
This
scene's perfection?
This
subtle luminosity?
Mysterious
and deep is sleep...
But
ah!
What
miracle it is
To
see.
