1 Are you ready with me?
Once we make contact
Jump from mind to mind
The first stanza is asking, “Are you ready, and are you with me?” Because once we make contact, (mind to mind or heart to heart), we can jump together “from mind to mind”. The working pronoun in this stanza is “we”, you and me. The poem’s voice asks you to join me. Here, minds are like steppingstones.
2 Stages of mental development
Principles that mirror
Immersed in self-experience
The second and third lines are saying the same thing, except now the stepping stones (of minds) are stages of mental development. No matter how we develop mentally we are stuck in the existential prison of the self. . . until we aren’t! This fits the earliest roots of the word “mind” as memory = thoughts that “revolve around the mind”. If we put these two stanzas together, what is being described here is an outward journey (from mind to mind) that is also an inward revolving of memory, which connotes reflection, so, an inward journey. We might expect both introverted and extraverted movement: progression and introgression or regression.
3 Friendly little mountain
That is how it looks
An image brightened in her mind
Working backwards from the third line in this stanza, the mountain comes up as a light-bringing image in “her mind”. It is a transcendent image, a healing image.
4 Moss growing on things
Wind blew through the enclosure
Powers and patterns
The “friendly little mountain” is only an image in stanza three, something to look at or contemplate. In stanza four we might imagine ourselves on the mountain. Since the mountain has come up, that must be where the moss is growing and the wind is blowing. The “wind blowing through the enclosure” sounds like a ruin of some sort in nature, moss-covered, perhaps where we / she is sheltering from the wind. The last line in the stanza is telling us that underneath the manifest reality (the mossy mountain-scape and the enclosure) there is an energetic, archetypal flux of endless potential (powers and patterns). (For me, this conjures Donovan’s lyrics, “First there is a mountain / Then there is no mountain / Then there is.” I think Donovan was singing about this conundrum of human consciousness: If I see a mountain (out there), is it really there, or is it just in my mind, i.e, an archetypal image of a mountain?
5 The hole in the drum
Above my pay grade
Once we make contact
The hole in the drum is a problem. A drum with a hole in it loses its ability to resonate and amplify. If a Native American or African drum, you might say it loses its power and its spirit is compromised, its ability to connect us with the sacred. “Above my pay grade” means something like, I am not qualified to fix it. So I live with it, taking it in as a zen-like riddle or koan. Nevertheless we are making contact, we are . . .
6 Heading toward the molten core
Where they might have moved it
Sensory deprivation chamber
. . . getting closer to the core. “The molten core” makes me think of the core of the planet. I can’t think of anything else that has a molten core. The idea of a drum as a chamber that contains and amplifies a beat, has metamorphosed into a “sensory deprivation chamber”. The idea here might be that we may not be able to repair the drum but we can seal our own inner space. In this stanza we are heading for the core, our inner core.
7 As debris flies in arcs
After a couple of years
Crossed elevated walkways
Stanza seven continues without pause “As debris flies in an arc”. What occurs to me is, this line is a visual of the aftermath of an explosion, without the sound, which is consistent with the “sensory deprivation chamber”. If we are remembering a violent blast that we might have witnessed or survived in the past, we might keep remembering it, but would we relive the shock wave and the percussion of the explosion? Perhaps not. So, there is the hole in the drum. There is no percussion in our chamber of traumatic memory, and perhaps other elements of the event are missing.
8 I’ve traveled so far
What do you mean?
Reality filled her body
The statement “I’ve traveled so far”, is questioned by a female voice, Perhaps it is the voice of the same woman whose mind was “brightened by the image” of the “friendly little mountain” in stanza two. Now her body is “filled with reality”. She is being enlightened or she is being transformed, but the transformation is somatic as opposed to esoteric. Or the question, “What do you mean?” might be the poem’s way of getting us to reflect on the meaning of “traveled so far”. There is the mute explosion followed by the passage of years, and the crossing of elevated walkways, which I picture as walkways skirting hazards. In other words the muted explosion is some violence that was survived. It happened in the past and it happened far away.
9 Runes were bought on-line
Thoughts would differ in Spanish
She touched the dint
“Runes were bought online” implies that there is something artificial about this process. Runes are an alphabet used by an ancient Germanic people almost two thousand years ago. often associated with divination. The mention of Spanish for me negates the possibility that something profound is happening with this woman. (For this interpretation I am remarking on the leap from runes (which hover, for me, outside of European or Western history) to Spanish. a modern / European language. Runes suggest divination whereas Spanish, in this context, connotes a shallowing of thoughts.) With “she touches the dint” I am back to recalling the koan of the hole in the drum.
10 But it quickly reemerged
Broken into two parts
Still a conspicuous absence
Whatever it is that is damaged, whether it is a drum or something else, now it is clearly broken and in two parts. With the line “still a conspicuous absence” I think of the drum and the sensory deprivation chamber and how the spirit of the drum is absent in a damaged drum and, in the sensory deprivation chamber, our senses are absent or missing, as in not hearing the sound of the explosion (first line, stanza 7) that sends debris flying.
11 Deranged from incarnation
Restaurant menus appear
But that doesn’t really matter
I think the “deranged” incarnation refers, not to the woman, but to something that is in the process of manifesting or being embodied and the process of creation or embodiment isn’t going well; it is disheveled or incomplete, a hybrid. The menus that appear don’t “really matter” because the creation is incomplete. There is nothing to feed yet.
12 A long way very quickly
I knew the story already
We began in the ruins
“We began in the ruins” sounds to me like “we began with the runes”. So, we are back in the ruins, and we are back to reading the runes, which reveal something about our journey, something that we needed to know or understand in order to mend our drum. With this stanza, the process of (manifestation, birth?) is quickened. This echoes the first line in stanza 8, “I’ve traveled so are”. “So far” could refer to the long distance equated with many lives that have led to this incarnation, recalling both the stepping stones of mind to mind and the stages of development associated with reincarnation. And we are back to the thought that the self is an inescapable mirror — until it isn’t! Some people are blessed with being able to recall their previous lives or the journey of their incarnations, and it might be said that those people knew or know the story (their story). The line, ”we began in the ruins” for me implies that when we began, however long ago, the ruins were not ruins but places full of life, in the present tense. (And the runes (in the ruins) were not “bought on line”. In other words, we started when our incarnations started. For those of us who recall or are able to relive our previous incarnations, we might step into a ruin and it comes to life for us. (This happened to me in Ireland when we were spending time in a 5th century ruin of a monastery. I found myself in a split reality where I could hear the voices of the monks and was aware of the “shades” of monks going about their duties. (Was I once one of these monks in a previous life?)
13 Forms of spiritual communications
Into a single network
A juvenile saved his life
Stanza 13 (lines one and two) introduces the notion of a confluence or coming together of spiritual communications, not the Internet (a network of networks in which users at any one computer can [with password clearance] get / share information from other computers or directly with other users at other computers), but a spiritual interconnection independent of technology. The last line of stanza 13 and all of stanza 14, although funny, pick up on the last line of stanza nine “She touched the dint” , stanza 10 and the first line in stanza 11: the dint she touched “quickly reemerged” (meaning it just needed that healing touch to manifest or embody, but it is not one thing. Its incarnation is a concretion of two parts, “deranged”).
14 Dressed up as a dolphin
With one arm in plaster
With the help of a druid
. . . But “deranged” or not, it is a savior. It is young, “juvenile”, part dolphin, a hybrid savior, injured (broken) but healing (becoming whole) ”with the help of a druid”.
15 The theme of the oneness
Womb of any living creature
The revelation of truth
“The theme of the oneness” carries forward the image of the single network or streaming together of spiritual communications. From the “womb of any living creature” is a way of saying that all of life is pooling its generative power for the “revelation of truth”. In these three lines there is “the theme of oneness”, the womb of all Life, and the revelation of truth, a confluence of sorts.
16 An enormous room is packed
300 years on the cold water
After the day of rest
What this revelation is, is apparently on the order of a new or renewed Creation. There is “an enormous room that is packed”, which to me is an analog of the womb that is ripe to deliver the new (whole? healed?) creation. The last two lines are not linear, but neither is most of this poem. As with all sand-blasted poems, each stanza is fractal and unless the poet intervenes by forcing a linear ending, the poem must end fractally. In this case, the second to last line seems out of place. But, let us consider, not just the Christian Creation story but many creation stories start with the spirit of the new creation moving on the cold, dark waters of chaos, which is an image of the world before creation, whereas the last line seems to be describing the day after creation, a “day of rest”. In the end, this poem reads as prophetic. This might just be me, but I think we are currently passing through those “300 years on the cold water”.
………………
Poet’s note: If you dive into this, remember that everyone’s interpretation could be different . . . but I submit that most interpretations would be different and the same. And some might be more informed than others, while weaker translations might be missing something important. It is the same with dream interpretation except with dream interpretation, due to the archetypal underpinning, there is a little less wiggle room.
What is a “sand-blasted” poem? The fragments of this genre of poem are randomly lifted from books randomly pulled from my library, with certain lines repeated. I see the underpinning metaphors as archetypal patterns which loosely structure the interweaving narratives. If one of the narratives took over, it would become a linear or conventional poem and the multidimensionality of it would be forfeited. Also the synchronistic factor, which is strong in sand-blasted poems, would be diminished.
………………………….
Books / Periodical used:
McCarthy’s Bar Pete McCarthy
The Drift Issue Eleven / Fall 2023
The Gnostic Gospels Elaine Pagels
The Mythic Imagination Stephen Larson
Gary Lindorff - Nine Waves 