He Who Creates Re-Creates Himself
for René Passeron*
You may not grow old too soon
if
Things you have known will come back to you again
No revision nor recall need put them back in place
Time was when you knew the time
the place the face
Even the scarce women in prized moments gone in pain
Who would care nor what would it matter
in which life upon what water
you have trailed your fingers
upon waves of papers
Let your mind brush
some canvas in a rush
Left your mark
upon some bark
Wed some wanton women
spawned wholesome omens
Made as if the artier your words
held some moment in a perennial frame
Never to be banged away by fading suns
collapsing quasars
asteroid storms
puncturing galaxies
usurping black holes
Can this act of writing seize the moment
Or is it your way of saying
What else is there to be done?
Let the unknowable undermine the unknown
Here on this planet
we have made our sinuous conventions
stick to paper and canvas
stone and sound
And words that are haloed
by the sickness of the poet
though all is not lost for the pen
whose blood will
possess
anchor
expose
our futile justifications
explications
ratiocinations
doctoral dissertations
And generations will tremulously grant him
The right to unravel the eternities
For one who dared capture the moment
In the capsule of a poem
*René Passeron, b. 1920, a surrealist painter and philosopher, was the principal figure conducting research into “poietics” in France, since the eighties, after the renowned aesthetician Etienne Souriau took over from the internationally famous poet Paul Valéry who first mooted the project in 1939, though the Russians had already begun publishing in this field of research during the First World War. Professor Passeron led a twin career as a Senior Research Fellow with the premier European research organization: the French National Centre for Scientific Research (C.N.R.S.) and as a Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and at the University of Paris-I-Panthéon Sorbonne where he was the Director of the Institute of Aesthetics and Fine Arts.
©: T.Wignesan 1987 April 12, 1987 [from the collection : back to background material, 1993] Pub. in Poietics: Disquisitions on the Art of Creation. Allahabad: Cyberwit.net, 2008.
Copyright © T Wignesan | Year Posted 2012
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