MESSAGE AT SUNSET FOR BISHOP BERKELEY
"How could nothing turn so gold?
You say my eeyelid shuts the sky;
In solid dark I see stars
As perforations, loneliness
As a heavy weight, what is
As nothing if it’s not ephemeral.
But still the winter world
Could turn your corneas to ice.
Let sense be made. The summer sun
Will drive its splinters straight
Into your brain. Let sense be made.
I’m saying vision isn’t insight,
Buried at last in the first
Person’s eye. You
Should see it: the sky
Is really something."
You say my eeyelid shuts the sky;
In solid dark I see stars
As perforations, loneliness
As a heavy weight, what is
As nothing if it’s not ephemeral.
But still the winter world
Could turn your corneas to ice.
Let sense be made. The summer sun
Will drive its splinters straight
Into your brain. Let sense be made.
I’m saying vision isn’t insight,
Buried at last in the first
Person’s eye. You
Should see it: the sky
Is really something."
- from A World Of Difference by Heather McHugh, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company: 1981
"Esse est percipi" (To be is to be perceived) wrote the Irish philosopher George Berkeley (1685-1753).
For biologist turned artist Eugene Gabritschevsky, the unexpected was the key to knowledge, not an unusual view for a scientist.
Heather McHugh has said that she writes poetry because she needs the structute of discrete lines. "I'm drawn to finding the grammar that can make the thing that can't happen happen."
Images by Eugene Gabritschevsky from the collection of Daniel Cordier at the Museum of Modern Art, Toulouse, France.
2 comments:
They both attempt to make sense of what they are experiencing in similar ways, somehow (although different at first glance). Intriguing pairing here, Jane.
If we include Bishop Berkeley, it's a trio!
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