Worms of Light

I'm afraid that poets are pointing things out, very carefully, but their indexes are impossible to read.  Even when a poem speaks to me I fail to communicate exactly what it was saying, or even specify the language.  Poetry is like any other piece of art.  It's communicating an idea that, ideally, is unable to be stated plainly.  Therefore, the knowledge - if that's what it is - contained in poems is nebulous. 

Reading poetry is like studying a subject for which you have no use - yet.  The images and ideas stream into your experience.  Sometimes only incomplete snippets make it through with the rest forgotten. 

Writing poetry is like labelling the images and ideas which don't fit neatly in your mental drawers.  It's wrangling the ideas with legs and persuading them to stand still rather than running back into the dark.   

But labelling is not the same as organising categorically.  The poems are captured in beautiful glass jars and the labels are written in an intricate script but, though the shelves look neat and ordered, the these collections are not fit for a museum.  Poems are cabinets of oddities and poetry books are curiosity shops.  Don't walk in expecting to find that which you seek.  Expect to be delighted by the lambent trinket, covered in dust. 



from Paracelsus by Diane di Prima


                           Extract

the tar, the sticky

substance

                    heart

                                of things

(each plant a star,        extract

the juice of stars

                                by circular stillation

smear

            the inner man w/the coction

till he burn

            like worms of light in quicksilver

not the false

            puffballs of marshfire,

Paracelsus' Salamander