A DIALOGUE ON LIGHT

 

A DIALOGUE ON LIGHT 

The world/ makes room for us, we think,/ shows us where to go with/ light, walk here, live here,/ drive here. --- From “Light House” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 09-26-11

1. The Big Questions

What would it be like if there were no light?

The world, as we know it, ends with a whimper. 

If there were no sun, all things would ebb like

floodwaters into black cisterns, dark vessels 

where everything is nothing, where still points

are pointless stillness, a silence of the dead.

Who would see the hand of God in all creation?

Let there be light, a primal dictum, would be a shot 

in the dark, a desperate plea of blind virtual lives,

cyber civilisation nowhere near a tungsten lamp. 

Denied the power of Microsoft, the hard and fast

friendships of the Facebook, when will life begin? 

Sans pings, bytes, binaries, infernal halogen head

lights, movie houses, Las Vegas slot machines, 

a city that never sleeps, nuclear plants, scopes—

telescopes or gastro scopes—why would a world be? 

2.  The Small Answers 

For a small campfire by the sea to singed the smelt

to go with the purloined gin and tin cup of coffee. 

Why? To mark the rhythm of shadows on the wall

when all one has is the warmth of frenzied caresses. 

What would this cranny in Manhattan’s holes

be like without those lamp posts? Will benches 

in the park be any better as sleepers for the tired

and angry without woodfire in those filthy drums? 

Quieter that all this palaver, I guess. Certainly less

involved than asking for a light on a cold night 

when a deep and good smoke will mean a distance

between life and death: a warm mouth massage.

--- Albert B. Casuga

09-27-11