Philosophy With a Sweet New Life

[Bahaichap]

It's been 3 months since I posted an item here. Life is busy these days.-Ron

 

NOT ALL IS DREAMING

 

My dream was not like common dreaming but wonderful and kingly, my own self awake and strong. I woke up into a new and vivid life, a life of intenser colour and finer ecstasy, governed by other laws, a world more real making this world like a passing shadow. The stone walls were changed to opal; inside the opal fire burned. The fire on the hearth was like visible music, such was the beauty of its flame. The trees stood like an array of knights in mail. Their fruits were like lamps, their leaves like jewels. -Ron Price thanks to John Masefield, Lost Endeavour, London, 1910, 2,XV, p.243.

 

This is another poem about poetry,

the process, the experience of writing

embedded as it is in a new politics,

a new philosophy of history

wherein are born intenser colours.

But not all is intensity and victory;

there is struggle with temptation and loss;

there is fatigue and a strange quietness;

even in joy there is the small silence,

a pause, a stillness in the heart;

the orchestra of winds performs

its sad and distant music, while the sky

wears masks of smoke on grey.

This Earth is but a nest and this poetry

is about falling from the rim--and flying.

It is also about losing all the poetry

in the universe, wounded and whirled

on the grey edge of oblivion.

 

Ron Price

10 October 1996