Some Other Poet, White Iris
“Some Other Poet, White Iris”
When I look in the mirror what do I see?
I question existential questions and fiction,
my eyes are the eyes of another staring back at me,
perceived through the glassy tear film that separates us
glides another life in a timeless place where observant,
that Other watches within that strange oculum holding pen,
a shadow that appears to be me, stands as I am, solitary there
abandoned at the apex of a dome where there the singular gate opens
like an iris blooming in its reflection, it is transfiguring into a 1000 petalled Lotus,
a Sahasrara crown hovers there, waiting to be worn within without,
beyond the body, where that Other places it on the untouched softer fontenelle;
what if all this around me outside the mirror is the surreal, and
I am inside the mind of Borges tracking his messages in his winding labyrinth
of chance and infinity, seeking the archive keeper,
and like an automaton here on the outside,
Borges winds me up, he pulls my strings, but no,
he is still amongst the living, and I walk with the dead,
so no, perhaps not Borges,
but the elusive removed ghost
of some other dead Poet
calls me
further
and
further
in
Candide Diderot. ‘24
“The waking mind with its dreams,
which may well be but broken images of the night’s treasure,
a timeless world that has no name or measure
and breaks up in the mirrors of the day.
Who will you be tonight, in the dark thrall
of sleep, when you have slipped across its wall?”
(Jorge Luis Borges, excerpt)
“Behind the name is that which has no name;
Today I have felt its shadow gravitate
in this blue needle, in its trembling sweep
Casting its influence toward the farthest strait,
with something of a clock glimpsed in a dream
and something of a bird that stirs in its sleep”
(Jorge Luis Borges, excerpt)
“The irises themselves, very many of them just passing their prime, seem anxious, especially by way of contrast with the rigid orange marigolds behind them. There’s an urgency to the brushstrokes, too, that makes it hard to read this as a tranquil piece.”
“Considering van Gogh’s isolation when he painted Irises, the work’s lone white iris seems particularly poignant as a symbol of his seclusion, although without textual proof, it’s at best a projection. The bloom may have simply caught the eye of the artist, and it’s our own restiveness responding. So much of what we choose to see in Irises is conjecture, but its enduring pull is very real.”
“Van Gogh started painting Irises within a month of entering the asylum, in May 1889, working from nature in the hospital garden. There is a lack of the high tension which is seen in his later works. He called painting "the lightning conductor for my illness" because he felt that he could keep himself from going insane by continuing to paint.”
what -v- who.
Copyright ©
Candide Diderot
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