What Light He Saw I Cannot Say

Poems

Sidney Burris, Dave Smith

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9780807175224
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Filosofia orientale

What Light He Saw I Cannot Say, a new poetry collection from Sidney Burris, explores the interplay of human consciousness and objective reality, always in celebration of the imaginative spirit that brings them into a productive and often spiritual conversation. Poems both demanding and beguiling gain a deeper resonance as they encourage us to understand the often mysterious links that unite the people and events that crowd our daily lives. Deploying themes that encompass the physical, the spiritual, and the meditative, What Light He Saw I Cannot Say remains rooted in the human condition while showing how this experience is rich with vision and transcendence.

IV

Nocturne: Pascal Says

I think it’s too full, this moon:

snow-light careens off the snowfield,

blinding us to all

that half-lit yearning deep inside

to live, to breathe, and finally to see

how much we have left to do before we go.

But Pascal says it’s not good to have everything

one needs, unwise to be too free.

And it’s true, December’s a shakedown cruise:

leaf-rot simmers under my window,

the air’s anorexic, lamp and book

are a burden, and I conclude I am

too free, that I have all I need.

Close the book, kill the lamp.

The moon’s full, but Pascal says it’s loss I want.

So I shut my eyes. And read.

Morning’s Glory

I woke up this morning

obsessed with the latticed light

laid in slats across the floor—

a ladder leading nowhere.

Later, morning’s glory

gone downhill while high

overhead, the dead glare

of noon vultures homing in.

Our home, yours and mine,

here in the offing,

here in the place of dreaming

and hearts that climb and soar

and sink and fall, and always

on good days, the days

we pray for, the ones that come

once, and come no more.

To a Friend Who Would Tell Stories

High noon. A storm crawls by, and it’s late to be

still in bed, but I am for once high lonesome

in a motel where lives have come undone

on these wine-dark beds big as wine-dark seas;

to this sea, though, I’ve taken the Shakespeare

she gave me with her young hands and the Berryman

on Shakespeare, an old hand now up and gone,

and I’d give her what he once gave to me:

Hear the winds brawl? Listen. They brawl for you.

Think of Ulysses. And the soughing sound

of his sea. Now you’re there, and there is art,

a long run of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• I
• II
• III
• IV