World Light
We watch the seventh episode—I’m buffered. People
on the screen inhabit the room, continue my thinking. I
step out onto the deck, the dark. The unequivocal snow.
I could be shocked and traumatized, but not killed off mid-
plot—I’d have to survive till the season wraps, at least.
I watch my breath curl into cold, enfold the falling flakes;
picture the two of us in bed, midnight quiet as rime.
You’re rolling the flannel blanket between your thumb
and index finger like an infant in his crib. I’m reading to you—
a Nordic story. Same thick book I’ve been reading to you
for years. You know it’s about a poet but you never remember
his name. Enough to hear my voice and feel my foot against
your calf. I wriggle and puff the blanket up; you grunt
and flatten it back, complain that I am letting in the cold.
Maybe it’s so. We’ve generated rituals—soft drugless soporifics.
—These might be signs as well by which we’ll recognize each other
in a deeper future sleep: There is no light where that is, so we’re eyeless
| Elana Wolff |
|
levelheaded: World Light
In this poem’s first five lines or so, the speaker imagines her life defined by the borders of a television episode. She won’t “be killed off mid- / plot.” She will “survive till the season wraps, at least.” These moments of soft comedy begin to develop the speaker’s penchant for hopeful yearning (and her understanding that in real life she could be “killed off” at any moment). They also point out the deep, foundational influence art can have on us. The poem isn’t a social critique (at least not entirely), but it starts with the speaker using television as a scaffold on which her own emotional life is built. Subtly, the speaker asks, “How can we expect our output to resemble anything but our input?”
The scene that follows – of two longtime lovers in the moments before they sleep – is less colored by the earlier television scene, but it’s still tied to the limits of our imaginations as readers. She asks us (or whoever her addressee is) to “picture the two of us in bed.” This is a brilliant device that lets the scene that follows be either real or invented. We can’t be sure whether we’re seeing an actual event or a purposefully detailed invention. And in a sense, all poems are purposefully detailed inventions. Just as the television episode gave her life a few moments of artificial context, this poem frames a few moments of life with the artifice of a poem.
The poem is written in couplets – all except for one line. At that line, the speaker shifts from a narrative about bedtime rituals into speculation. She shifts from considering the past or present into thinking about the future. It takes no big leap to read the “deeper future sleep” as death. The speaker hopes that these “signs,” these “rituals” will transcend time and space. She gives sketches out the almost magical way a billion tiny domestic moments coalesce into a life, and she hopes these moments will exist after life too. That hope is dashed with the poem’s final phrase, “There is no light where that is, so we’re eyeless,” in which she seems pretty sure the “deeper future sleep” will be all darkness but also admits she is “eyeless” to see or understand it.
That’s where the title comes in. The “World Light” of this poem is a soft glow. It’s the halo of twitching light from a television that’s been left on after falling asleep. And it’s very possibly the only light we’ll ever see, so it’s worth turning toward whoever’s laying next to you and noticing, enjoying, thinking about all small things you recognize in each other – because you never know.
-The Editors
