The Final Version

It will come to be, but only when the myth

functionally ceases, of course. Dark and light.

Clear as black and white, or as day and night.

Folk wisdom always rhymes because what we call

wisdom is the mediating of opposites. Total

presence, total absence. All color, no color.

Remember, ours is the animal eye, not dark,

not light, but juice merely, merely transparency.

Further it is tempting to say that she, the painter,

sees from the dark toward the light and that he,

the poet, sees from the light toward the dark, but that

would be an oversimplification. Perhaps our trouble

is that we no longer can be satisfied

with oversimplification. One knows

such agonies, forceful conciliations! Kodály’s

duo for light and dark (violin & cello, Op. 7)

(the agonies, too of Heifetz and Piatigorsky), or

Vlaminick’s Bridge at Chatou or that extraordinary

seizing-up of the soul in The Road. At all events

through we struggle, and know we must struggle,

to retain our relativism, our mediating belief,

the two absolutes are unassailable. All and nothing.

Hence they resolve dangerously into one. Sometimes

god, vindictive and helpless, or destination,

the all to unmetaphysical injustice; but

for us the myth is E=MC². Ever more difficult,

more dangerous, less satisfying, this human function

which we call consciousness. Trying to make

ends meet (and the solace of facetiae). No wonder

so many drop out. Can one blame them? Yet each

defection brings us nearer to loss of function,

the time before and after myth, called Chaos.

“Ah,” they cry out, such dear people, she and he.

“How can we continue? Is it too hard. Too hard…”

The Mythology of Dark and Light (1982)

Hayden Carruth
Last Poems
Copper Canyon Press 2012

You can link to the painting progression here.

Thank you Copper Canyon Press.