LIGHT: BIG QUESTIONS, SMALL ANSWERS

LIGHT: BIG QUESTIONS, SMALL ANSWERS

1. 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. 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 than 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.

Except that these answers are smaller questions.

Why answer questions with yet another question?

--- Albert B. Casuga