Elke's new work
Must we squeeze our shut eyes so tight
they fly open, popping from sockets,
searing our hair and pulling out in strings
the resolution made long years ago
that the world is a world of objects
and never must it vary?
Solidity is a misdirection. The fixed, the shut,
the hammered tight, the trapdoors to everything
are illusions. Only dreams are solid as stone.
What surrounds us is what we sense-
forces, fire, the flames and the wings of desire,
the hopes and urges, the result of our prayers
and the wide explosions of our lust,
these surround us, like bedlam, like breezes and bedrock.
The mountains of Tibet are a metaphor,
the heaps of granite and deep seas
are goals too cautious for lovers. It is flame
that burns within us, it is flame
that explodes around us, we are seduced,
inevitably and thoroughly,
by flame.
There is hardly a pause, hardly a peace
that is not, in part, a lie.
We will glow only by expecting passion.
we will gain our peace by devouring flames.
this is the way of the wild woman, the one with laughter,
this is the road of the human seeker, the poor one,
it is the lovers' pyre and their leap,
the song that sings us all. This muttering
across each year that we age
is the sound of flames.
May 19, 2000
For Elke's spring vernissage
Fred Ryan