Prose on Poetry

Suddenly, the smallest of nostalgias ache for presence. Grandfather’s cane, a favourite musty-smelling sweater, affectionate little hurts, an ungiven letter. The textures, the smells, the touches. And then there is the melancholic desire for all the tomorrows. The utterly human striving for a better day with each dawn. Those sentimentalities that we hide and those that we reveal. And in the fluencies and the stammerings of language, these nostalgias find an unusual home.

This, always, helps keep the flame of faith alive. Faith in the power of the written word – its eternal promise of containing yesterday’s memory and tomorrow’s hope. Experience spilling into poetry. Poetry making us, poetry finding us. Poetry being a saving grace, redemption. For agonised moments, an analeptic. Earnestly earned with fondest of longings. Its emancipatory effect. It asserts itself, its self. Poetry is grace, softly conspicuous. Poetry is patina – a warmth that comes with ageing, breathing, persisting. A river that wears mist but still roars. A white wall, almost tormented by rioting bougainvillea.

Even in the struggle for those stubborn words that don’t visit readily, the wait is a sweet sting. Like the absence of a travelling beloved’s toothbrush jolting you awake in the morning. Is it, after all, an absence then? In the quietism of poetry’s birth, in the questing and thirsting, in this glamorous repetition, in its greys and in its grace, you find those strange soul-spaces whence emerges strength.

Poetry visits as a stranger, as a song, as a bellow, as even vacuous silence. That audacity of squaring a circle to invent a corner and hurtle through it. Poetry – witchy and wild. Words – walkers of the infinity path. Savage splendour.

Sometimes, poetry itself visits as a muse.