CATARACT

 

 

Here,

Under the high-wire years,

The cold cataract steers;

Hear,

Below,

The drowning cries of the heroes

Flood into nothing but echoes,

Echoes.

Their small thunder

Fades away and away to forever,

Although we call through wind and water

For more, and more.

But this waterfall

Is only the eye of an image which we call

Space, where the tale of a tear hangs dying to fall,

And that is all, is all.

 

C. IGR 1978)

I was always fascinated by the typographical appearance of words as well as their sound. For example, the words ‘thunder’ and ‘waterfall’ looked to me as interesting as they sounded. For me, the structure of a poem tends to evolve through the creative meditation and grow out of the actual writing. The way it finally looks on the page is important. I remember how difficult it was to achieve such a finish on an old-fashioned typewriter. Hail the laptop!

Image courtesy Google Images.