reflected thought off the cave wall.
“It is easy to see what you’re thinking
but try to control what you’re feeling.”
“I respond to this day’s daze,
this cycling drama of misplacement.”
Once judgment was sustained
the impulse was suspended, insecurely.
It wasn’t as if there was any disagreement.
The casual reader wouldn’t discern any
antagonism between Thalamus and Amygdala;
nothing of biblical proportions or classical reference.
“A musing on the seen ambiguities in uncertain contours,”
Thalamus contended, “would be of no use.”
You understand then,” Amygdala replied,
“how the pressure becomes unbearable.”
“Understandably so, if you lose the overview.”
But neither was there. They disappeared into thin air.
All our feelings are within the cave wall,
all our thoughts are within the skin
said Amygdala.
When the feelings hit the wall
when we jump out of our skin
does that take us off course
or is that the course we’re meant to take?
asked Thalamus
Desire makes the pressure unbearable
noted Amygdala
and wearable, as wings
responded Thalamus,
I’ve wondered as I’m wont to do,
is free will another name for desire?
Don’t be so serious, I’m smiling because
you and I are having this dialogue
and that’s a rare pleasure,
and when we do as quoted from above,
there’s no antagonism
said Amygdala
Will you two shut up?
I’m trying to run things,
said the Basal Ganglia
(I know I can’t be as subtle as you are, but in my heavy-worded way I try to participate. MC).
Off course, of course, when direction lies
outside the old map. Put aside the atlas.
Step outside the cave
and see the scattered leaves
from the almond and the walnut trees.
Unconstrained by circumstances,
free will takes flight
on the wings of desire.
And, I wonder about the heart of art.
And this is off course
from Amygdala and
Thalamus. So it seems.
Bill Packard
wrote a series
of poems
about the erotic
aspect of vision.
He likened
eyeballs to gonads.
Something about the shape
of gonads, eyeballs and thalami
indicates a correspondence
between these internal balls.
but are these parts in dialogue?
that’s what i thought might be explored
in amygdala and thalamus
as if they were names of classical
personas. instead they turn out
to be walnuts and almonds;
they don’t talk to each other.
except through this anthropomorphizing
that brings us back to the imagination
(where free will reigns).
have you read keith douglas?
a british poet who died
in 1944 during the normandy invasion
he was only 24
but left some fine poetry
i found him in a 1957 anthology
a famous anthology
edited by donald hall and louis simpson
(and robert pack)
douglas is represented by a few poems
really fine though i think they
speak clearly across the years
in a poem titled OXFORD
about the university city
he writes
This then is the city of young men, of beginning,
ideas, trials, pardonable follies,
the lightness, seriousness and sorrow of youth.
(of course this was before
the university went co-ed
but, he continues)
And the city of the old, looking for truth,
browsing for years, the mind’s seven bellies
filled, become legendary figures, seeming
Stones of the city, her venerable towers;
dignified, clothed by erudition and time.
I wonder what he meant by “the mind’s seven bellies”?
Maybe he meant the bellies of walnuts,
almonds, pistachios, pecans, chestnuts,
hickory and leechee
Well, of course, the parts of all
are in constant and divers
conversation, this is the murmur
of the heart
Douglas is doing what we poets do
what humans do: we give personas
to objects, to parts of the body,
to cities, to stone
why do we invest “selfness” in things?
Packard’s eyeball-gonads bespeak Oedipus,
not to mention Stephen Daedalus
who saw such things…
About “the seven bellies of the mind,”
Augustine refers to memory as the stomach of the mind.
Watching Inspector Lewis,
I’ve grown curious about Oxford
In England, I was part of a communal theater
organized by Donald Gardner
We rehearsed at Cambridge
another university town
the new mystery series “Grantchester”
is set near Cambridge
the main character, Sidney Chambers,
is vicar of grantchester
the agon
between detective
and culprit
a tension
Raskolnikov
felt;
the Erinyes
pursuit of
Clytemnestra’s killer
resolved
in Aeschylus’s
trilogy;
a walnut (thalamus)
and an almond (amygdala)
make a nutty duo
both perceive
and interpret
but does either
recognize its actions?
1 comment:
Thanks for posting this. I treasure our poetry "round" as it is a form of song.
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