A bit of a departure. 2 poems, on a roughly similar theme.

I began the first one with a simple physiological fact; one I thought had some metaphorical possibilities, and would be fun to noodle around with.

It was written on the computer – a keyboard, not pen on paper – and these tend to be less linear, more stream of consciousness. So there was one stanza which didn't really fit, and which I couldn't massage into a form that worked. Instead of discarding it, I used it as the opening of a new poem. It completely disappeared in the re-writing, but the bones are still there (even if I'm the only one who could possibly disinter them!)

Anyway, both poems have something to do with perceptions of reality and the unreliability of vision, so I thought it interesting to present them together.

Aperture

Dec 12 2019

The human lens

yellows as we age.

So after the blinding light of emergence.

After focus has been learned.

After mastering motion

and resolving close from far,

our first view of the world

is the clearest we will ever see.

The infant's immaculate eye

is a a wide-open aperture

admitting frictionless light;

every wavelength, at equal speed

every photon seen.

But softens to sepia

with the steady accretion of years,

like looking through frosted glass

or plastic fogged by sun.

We have gotten older

without noticing that high-beams have a hazy glow

lamps, ghostly halos,

how dim light flatters faces
bold colours have bled.

Because the eye is not a camera.

As neither is reality,

replicating exactly

like a photographic plate.

Rather, it is perceived second-hand,

passing first to the brain

then the mind's simulacrum.

Is framed

by memory and setting

what we've come to expect,

acted upon

by our prejudice and flaws

and blinkered self-regard.

So as we get closer to death

reality

becomes more and more virtual.

When the infirmities of sight

and beliefs that have hardened

create their own version of the world,

and cynical old men

no longer entertain

any illusion of clarity

or that truth is possible.

Who long forget

how the world looks.

And who can never see again

as purely, or naively

through as immaculate a lens.

Detachment

Dec 11 2019

We say seeing is believing

and faith is merely faith.

Yet who doesn't know

that sight deceives?

That the higher the light

the darker the shadow?

Or hasn't been seduced by faith?

Its surrender

and heart-felt certainty,

the tremors of doubt

that only harden our denial.

And what, then, for apostates like me,

whose darkness only deepens?

Who are incapable of surrendering

to the magical thinking

that helps us bear our pain

and carry on?

Yet who sometimes succumb

in a moment of weakness

to the blandishment of belief;

longing to be immersed

in its amniotic warmth,

to feel our boundaries soften

and weight dissolve.

And who also find solace in darkness;

how it conceals and protects

how peaceful it is.

Nevertheless, I am amused

that nothing can be trusted,

the evidence of our eyes

the certainty in our gut.

So am I a cynic

who has run out of hope?

A skeptic

nihilist

provocateur?

Or a materialist

who wonders how real things really are?

Who knows, like the tectonic plates of earth

there is no sure thing,

even the ground you're standing on.

Lava, sulphur, caustic ash.

Will burn you alive

no matter how hard you pray

how wilfully blind.