The Physician in the Dark
I laugh at metaphysics
which devours me.
— Gambrowicz
To keep things handy, take note of all events of my life:
“Today I am twenty-six,” and so on.
The rain is forming an intimate relationship with me.
Do not mistake repeated images for symbols
I am Saturn I am far away.
I have a dream where I am on a stage and I am the stage
and the audience and especially the lights.
Momentary deities.
She leaves and so does it.
One object in this room is a holy wonder-working icon
but which one?
Each object is a sphinx.
When an icon is destroyed that saint dies
and that is all Emerson.
We trembled as children.
In the street an angel ascends to heaven, within reason.
It’s bad to loathe the spiritual growth of friends.
One does not “have an imagination”
one gets locked in a zoo cage
said to contain sea monsters
but which is paved and unfurnished.
The lizard at the bomb site is unafraid and has known
of the world’s end sorting through true and false gods.
| Dustin Junkert |
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levelheaded: The Physician in the Dark
The epigraph to this week’s poem reads a couple different ways. Is it the laughter at metaphysics or metaphysics itself that does the devouring? From the outset then, as readers we’re like “The Physician in the Dark”—armed with bits of information, but lacking a complete picture.
While the poem’s opening lines instruct either the reader or someone else, the speaker also seems to be addressing himself. After telling us to “take note of all events of my life,” the speaker goes on to piece his life together for us. Though he says, “The rain is forming an intimate relationship with me,” the specifics of that intimacy are left out. Our knowledge of the speaker, and his own knowledge of himself, is cloaked in mystery.
After being told not to “mistake repeated images for symbols,” the speaker uses the phrase “I am” four times in two lines. Taken in the context of the spiritual words that litter the poem (metaphysics, Saturn, deities, holy, sphinx, saint, angel, heaven), we can’t help but think of the Old Testament tale in which God tells Moses “I am that I am.” With this in mind, the speaker’s dream in which he is stage, actor, audience, and lighting suggests that he lacks faith in a higher power.
The quest for something beyond “Momentary deities” is at the core of this poem. Saturn and sphinxes, icons and saints, Emerson and angels all exist, but only “within reason.” Even the imagination itself has restrictions, as it is confined to the prison-like limits of language. And yet, poetry allows us, like fearless lizards at a bombsite, to test those limits in the quest for truth.
– The Editors
