Let there be dark

There is an unconsciousness

Lurking in the light 

That blinds me 

And

A consciousness

Concealed in the darkness

That I am blind to

( Khan, 2021, p.38, ‘Darkness’)

When I wrote the poem, ‘Darkness’, in 2017, I think, inspired by Paul Bogard’s article, ‘Let there be dark’, I was specifically drawn towards his title and its linguistic inversions, celebrating the importance of darkness. ‘Ecological light pollution’, he writes, ‘is the bulldozer of the night’ and he goes on to list the absolute need for complete darkness for the preservation of our ecology. (Bogard, 2012). And so putting aside the uncanny fear attached to it, I turned to darkness, in this new light, to explore, on a spiritual level,

. . .  the remaining possibilities

Locked

In the layers of [my] darkness

(Khan, 2021, p.38, ‘Darkness’)

It is only now, after years of having written the poem, that I stumbled upon some of those possibilities, and unlocked them in the darkest hour before dawn, in my morning prayer, Fajr.

It is said that one always writes for an audience and I always felt no. There is no audience that I write for when I write poetry. I write it for me. For me to transcend the many unmanageable and intensely incomprehensible divisions and abstractions within and without me. Or at least that’s what I think I write for. An imagined transcendence that exists only in the form I give it. How can it be for anyone?  How can anyone understand the perspective I need to achieve in relation to what I am growing through? It is I who struggles to navigate through the subjective dead ends of perspective and language, and labours my way through them to emerge on the other side. With a poem. Fragile. Shaking. And yet, alive. 

I never write with someone.  It isn’t a collaborative enterprise either. The extreme privacy and intensity of my thoughts and emotions does not wish to sit with anyone, ‘over a drink, and some nibbles’, to validate it or reduce it to nothing.  It is only I who decides when and how I am ready to move beyond 

The whats and the whys and the ifs and buts’ 

And allow

The sound and fury of my pointless ramblings

To rise and spill over the edges of my page

Like the froth of a fizzy drink

(Khan, 2021, p 98, ‘A drink and nibbles’)

and assume a perspective in relation to it, that tastes of ‘salty regret or sweet indifference’.

And once I do, it is transcended. I am free. And light.  The externalization allows for  space,  some semblance of control and in some way, for some time, I am able to contain, if not overcome, some of what confounds me.

Since the Fajr morning prayer, however, things have changed. 

The search, for a perspective, a position, a point of view, from where I could step out of the reels of  my ‘Monkey dance’ and move beyond my many non-unifiable dichotomies, and divisions, to

‘[be] conscious

 In a forever

 That doesn’t exist’, 

(Khan, 2021, p52, ‘The Monkey Dance’) 

has found its way home and brought me one step closer to it. 

Darkness is the way home. And as I close my eyes and turn to the pitch darkness, within me, ‘Darkness is your candle’, whispers Rumi. And as I begin to see in the dark, I am able to surrender the search. I turn away from what Britannica calls, ‘the luminosity of ‘ordinary’ visible matter, (0.5 percent)’ of the universe, to the dark matter and energy of my soul, that makes up 99.5 percent of the universe, and me.  And it is in the world of darkness that the ‘unadulterated vision of completeness’, that my writing desperately sought, extends into a myriad possibilities of being, waiting for me to receive them.  Offering a true transcendence from the world of division and interpretation, darkness welcomes me into this extremely personal, precious and private space that is alive and electric, like an

‘undiscovered city

Buried under the blanket of light’ 

(Khan, 2021, p38, ‘ Darkness’). 

Language, I can already see, will not serve me for too long. 

I must be still. 

For I am not alone. 

And I can see

There is more than a platter of nibbles

Waiting for me

On our table.

 

References:

Bogard, P., 2012. Let there be dark. [online] Los Angeles Times. Available at: <https://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-xpm-2012-dec-21-la-oe-bogard-night-sky-20121221-story.html> [Accessed 14 September 2022].

Khan, S., 2021. On sadafternoons: A pool of orange and other poems. Singapore: Partridge Publishing.

Reiss, A., 2022. dark matter | Definition, Discovery, Distribution, & Facts. [online] Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: <https://www.britannica.com/science/dark-matter> [Accessed 14 September 2022].