“In the dark, without knowing them, we give them our hand.”
– Franz Marc, The Blue Rider Almanac
I must remind myself: Nobody burdened me with this. I picked it up, as a child — the sword, the biting tongue, the cutting word. In the woods in the dark, as if in a fairy tale, I found the sword and raised it above my head so that its blade caught the moonlight. And in that forest, as in most fairy tales — remember — the dark has always been full of noises, whisperings and crackings. That’s the way with forests. I had the sword shining in my hand, and only one choice to make: not to strike.
Not to strike when the dark bodies came rushing and stumbling, lurching towards me out of obscurity — to hold the sword high like a beacon and let them come. If I could only be brave enough to stay my hand, to hold it steady, the light would do the rest. Revelation would arrive in that thin mirror of moonlight: a forest full of ordinary others who were only also a little afraid. The cutting word honed to a point, a tongue full of light, and we would be okay. Maybe not the hard jolt of enlightenment, but just enough.
And I’ve been doing it for years now, speaking things gently, slowly into the light — let’s have a look at you, I’ll say, and together we look. Maybe not the shocking work of savage genius, maybe not poetry, but just enough. Nobody asked me to do this, I picked the work up freely and carried it along. I love you, I’ll say in my own way, and here they come towards the light of that love to see themselves better by it. How lucky I am to always be saying I love you to the world.
But, as the poet Wendell Berry writes:
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark.
You have to be a little bit in love to write poetry. I know this. But being in love makes you a little bit stupid. I know this, too.
And I know this — remember — that being seen is not the same as being safe.
The light is not yours, however much they might love you for it. Only the dark is yours.
So now what? I write poems, now and then, to remind myself I am not only the stayed and steady sword, but the woods as well, what rushes and dances in the half-moon light, cracking my knuckles and stubbing my toes, with a laugh a little wild. To remind myself that I am, too, what blossoms and sings in the dark.
I write a poem, now and then, and I put it away in a drawer — because some things cannot be said by the light. Some things can only be said in the dark speech of verse. They need dark spaces in which to breathe. This is not a retreat, a kind of self-deprecation. I write poetry because I am a little bit in love — and a little bit stupid. Because I want you to follow me — I want you to want to follow me — into the dark. I want us not to be afraid of the forest anymore. So that we are not always rushing towards the next bright thing we think might save us. So that we are not afraid to know one another from the inside out.
Because here is what I’ve learned, though it is late (though not so late) and I should be sleeping: It is an impossibility, this practice of continual self-disclosure. There is always some part of you withdrawing. For every part of you that turns into the light, another retreats. Kandinsky called this spiritual progress, the tip of the blade driving forward into the unseen future. But he was wrong. It does not matter which way you turn, forward or back, there will also always be another part of you turning, too.
To always be holding up a light is not to show yourself to the world, but to show the world to itself. To show yourself, turn off the light, write dense and dark in thick lines of ink in a journal no one will ever read. To know the whole — you have to practice moving in darkness, too, feeling your way forward with your fingertips. To know the dark for what it is, you must know it in a different way. Invite in wonder. Invite in touch.
But know, too, that when you do this — sometimes they might ask to lay you open on the conference table in the office kitchenette and discuss your insides under fluorescent light over hard boiled eggs that somebody brought from home in a ziplock bag.
Remember: Try to take this as the compliment it was meant to be.
Alison Leigh Lilly 