In a Dark Time
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
Notes
//mirror///invocation// In Theodore Roethke’s "In a Dark Time," the mirror is not a passive surface but a site of violent clarification. Roethke explores the moment when the "steady storm" of the soul forces the self to confront its own image stripped of all pretension. "A Man goes far to find out what he is— Death of the self in a long, tearless night, All natural shapes blazing unnatural light." The mirror in this context is the "dark time" itself, reflecting a self that has been fractured so that it might finally be known. The relationship between the two is one of agonizing synthesis: the self must recognize its own madness and shadows in the reflection to transcend them. By meeting the "Other" in the darkness of the glass, the seeker moves through self-estrangement to reach a final, terrifying wholeness. . . . #poetry #may #zine #self #mirror