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Poems by by Neruda, Ben Okri, Gary Snider, Robert Frost and others. Read against a backdrop of acoustic guitar.
Pablo Neruda wrote a kind of poetry that breaks the wall of silence around crystal, wood and stone. A poetry that strives after knowledge without prior knowledge and pretension. Poetry that seems to ‘turns the world to glass and shows us all things’*. In “Too many names” he speaks of a hidden, singing beauty.
His words shines like a singular melody, born as of from another world, full of meaning that hides in the unseen and unspoken depths of nature. In hearing these voices of the earth speak he finds a coherent vision of man and the universe, and his own poetic voice.
“I have a mind to confuse things,
unite them, make them new-born,
mix them up, undress them,
until all the light in the world
has the oneness of the ocean,
a generous, vast wholeness,
a crackling, living fragrance.”
His mind cuts right through everything, through all perceptions of reality to bring about something new, yet ancient.
“When I sleep at night,
what am I called or not called?
And when I wake, who am I
If I was not I while I slept?”
I read these words, and fall asleep. I awake in a dream, I hear distant sounds, a vague, unrecognizable melody. The notes enters consciousness slowly, languidly like the vague memories of a dream remembered, the notes like the images of the dream, frame by frame, like water dripping drop by drop from the roof of a cave, one by one, echoing in the cavernous acoustic of rock walled space. With these notes comes feelings and emotions, evoking first simple sounds that become words, words looking for other words to rhyme with. When enough images are remembered, plucked from the hidden depths of the unconscious mind, a story line emerges, and the mind searches for expression of the soul in words or notes. Deep from the earth a pulse emanates. Stone, rock, mountain. Harmonics radiate from the vast sky. Notes and words cascade like a waterfall. Waves on the ocean rises in huge curves, crashing like chords struck on a instrument of great natural design, new chords a-rising freshly from the swell of the deep sea. Basho, the famous writer of haiku, wrote:
“the temple bell stops
but the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers”
We can still feel the tremble of the struck bell its vibration resonating throughout the entire universe. We are transpoted to the temple grounds, surrounded by its natural grounds of great natural beauty. The poet gave the flower a voice we can understand. Great voices speaking of the greatness of the earth, a magnificent creation.