Tag: Mexico

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Déjà-vu

Once they are with me I know they belong,
these spells when I do what I know I’ve done.
They start with a memory, where ought to be none,
an onset of symptoms something is wrong.
Then reigns within a split second of grace.
Familiar feelings are stripped of their name.
What is marvelous springs from one and the same
utterly common theme I cannot place.

Some quirk or trick of thought quells my fear,
makes the moment’s scattered parts cohere,
shows behind the hubbub and din there swells
a hum I might be able to hear
if I ceased listening, a drone which dwells
and will  still when I disappear.

***
Satori, trance or vision but also even déjà-vu: these are among the kinds of mystical experiences we have all had. Here is one attempt among the millennia of others to put these seemingly transcendental states into words. In Pastis.

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Ars poetica

We went to spot a trogon and I began to hum,
picking paces down a path greater than their sum.

Milky lime, the river, sometimes smoky jade;
in the brush, bromeliads; red orchids in the shade.

Cawing to the trogon as if we knew his sound,
we surely drove him farther in the dim background

where flashes off the river flitted with the breeze
and likenesses of birds flocked behind the trees.

At length we reached the ambit of a murmur
first confused. From hush there rose up whispers, firmer

round each bend, until we knew a roaring
falls could best explain the din, though its pouring

as it filled the pool came to form a quiet cove,
a hollowed cell recessed within the tangle of the grove.

I looked up through the rainbow spray where
my creature should have been, emerald scarlet in the air,

thoughts of ruby green. The water’s plunge made the bluff
beside it soar, but no bird perched up in that rough.

Mine remained the rarest bird, one that’s never flown.
The echo of his dearth is for my ears alone.

***
In Pastis.