Please let the Discourse Begin *

I read a poem by Cyprian Norwid today that so reminded me of one I wrote years before discovery the supreme genius of Norwid. His poem is called 'A Meeting'. The title of my poem 'The Power of the Word' comes from the title of an academic conference on poetry that I attended, which deeply depressed me.

A Meeting

Rubbish is swept away and every chair

In the vast hall is dusted. Great men come in,

Sit down with a scrape like swords sheathed, and then

They announce - what? That all of them are there.

And they sit and they sit – until somewhere

In the world a madman discovers steam,

A mediocre artist nails down a sun-ray,

And some untutored dentist with supreme

Skill saves man from his supreme agony.

The Academies keep silent – all the members there. **

(1851)

The Power of the Word

The academy is gathered Suited, ageing men going grey Growing into texts, so bending And swaying like overbearing trees And those listening, lost in the forest The frost settling on the ground The cold biting, the dark deepening

The care is only for ideas 
Those of self and others who have threaded Thought-waves of a similar ilk Into a silver-surfaced mirror reflecting The one image of manifold unafraid Man's folly Singular Wisdom waited a while and then left, weeping As she locked the door to protect those on the outside

(2010)

* 'End of discourse' is a phrase used by Norwid at the end of his poem Bagatelle (1) 

** 'Cyprian Norwid - Poems - Letters - Drawings' translated by Jerzy Peterkiewicz