Thanksgiving, dark of the moon. Nothing down here in the underworld but vague shapes and black holes, Heaven resplendent but virtual Above me, trees stripped and triple-wired like Irish harps. Lights on Pantops and Free Bridge mirror the eastern sky. Under the bridge is the river, the red Rivanna. Under the river’s redemption, it says in the book, It says in the book, Through water and fire the whole place becomes purified, The visible by the visible, the hidden by what is hidden. ………. Each word, as someone once wrote, contains the universe. The visible carries all the invisible on its back. Tonight, in the unconditional, what moves in the long-limbed grasses, what touches me As though I didn’t exist? What is it that keeps on moving, a tiny pillar of smoke Erect on its hind legs, loose in the hollow grasses? A word I don’t know yet, a little word, containing infinity, Noiseless and unrepentant, in sift through the dry grass. Under the tongue is the utterance. Under the utterance is the fire, and then the only end of fire. ………… Only Dante, in Purgatory, casts a shadow, L’ombra della carne, the shadow of flesh— everyone else is one. The darkness that flows from the world’s body, gloomy spot, Pre-dogs our footsteps, and follows us, diaphanous bodies Watching the nouns circle, and watching the verbs circle, Till one of them enters the left ear and becomes a shadow Itself, sweet word in the unwaxed ear. This is a short history of the shadow, one part of us that’s real. This is the way the world looks In late November, no leaves on the trees, no ledge to foil the lightfall. ………… No ledge in early December either, and no ice, La Niña unhosing the heat pump up from the Gulf, Orange Crush sunset over the Blue Ridge, No shadow from anything as evening gathers its objects And eases into earshot. Under the influx the outtake, Leon Battista Alberti says, Some lights are from stars, some from the sun And moon, and other lights are from fires. The light from the stars makes the shadow equal to the body. Light from fire makes it greater, there, under the tongue, there, under the utterance.
This is sort of a cheat because I already organized my thoughts on this poem for the CWC. The truth is that I’ve dedicated quite a few notebook pages to this poem and the book that it features in. This is also the first time I’m repeating a poet, but goddamnit it’s Charles Wright. If you don’t read this guy’s work and say “Well shit, that is what poetry is supposed to be” then you’re doing it wrong. Yes, I’m gatekeeping. No, I don’t give a damn.
In an interview, Charles Wright once said he’s been writing the same poem for 40 years. It brings to mind the often-repeated Bruce Lee quote about fearing a man who has practiced a single kick 10000 times. Wright has developed a great ability to look into the void and give it form. He allows us to talk about the formless ambiguity of death and non-existence in a way that somehow satisfies the mind for a moment.
The first and last stanzas are very concrete, sandwiching two more introspective and conceptional stanzas. The first opens with a contradiction that immediately brings our mind to focus on light and darkness. Dark of the moon is interesting because we often speak of moonlight, but rarely the darkness that spreads across it, darkness caused by the shadow of the earth. This is actually our first mention of shadow.
The second line brings in the theme (the most common in his work) of an afterlife. The speaker tells us that humans are in the underworld, dark but real. Heaven is virtual, something that doesn’t carry the substance of this place. We don’t settle for the underworld, however. We wage a war against the great beyond. “Trees stripped and triple-wired like Irish harps” is a wonderful way to describe a utility pole. The Irish Harp is a symbol of rebellion, and in this way, the image of the pole is an earthly symbol of reality contrasting the amorphous hereafter.
The second stanza leans into ambiguity implying that the meaning of words are the shadows of words. That they are always there, beneath the sound of the word. There is no word to describe the unknowable, and so by the speakers reasoning it lacks a shadow — it lacks meaning. But still there is something beneath it, beneath the tongue that tries to capture it. Beneath it is the fire and the only end to fire, we were told in stanza one, is purification. So behind the unknown is a grand reset.
The third stanza offers another direct reference to the afterlife through Dante. And here we get a definition of shadow for this poem - the flesh casts the shadow, the shadow is the real substance within it. What is left behind. The shadow is a soul of sorts. His next lines, though, differentiate this soul from the religious soul. It isn’t pure, necessarily, but instead, it is darkness.
In the final stanza, there is no shadow. Meaning is gone in the evening. This is a metaphor for how meaningless things become as we near the end of something. The minutia seems less important. As darkness approaches, everything becomes darkness. As the end approaches, everything becomes the end. Wright has often mentioned in interviews that he is often inspired by paintings and painters. His choice of reference here makes sense. Leon Battista Alberti was a 15th-century polymath who wrote a book analyzing the use of light in paintings. Specifically, how shadows should be cast when painting a light source. His explanations were very literal - because fire is closer to the object than the stars, the shadow should be larger in the presence of fire. This is kind of a “no shit” statement that was celebrated during the Renaissance, but Wright finds deeper meaning in it. Wright reinterprets Alberti’s words to apply to the natural vs the manmade. The natural light creates an unseen that is equal to the body. In that case, this life is equal to whatever follows it. But fire (language, words, thoughts embodied, etc) increases the size of the shadow. It gives greater meaning to the after than what exists in the now. They make it matter more, whether it should or not.
Mike — sorry I missed the CWC session so glad I could make it up by reading your thoughts here!
Yes, I’m gatekeeping…. This is exactly what I read these for. I personally don’t seek at poetry as much as I might. This is a great example. I might have read some wright in college, but it’s been a while. Thanks for bringing it up.