Poem: "The Discovery of Motion"
Aug. 9th, 2007 12:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithSo far today, I've participated in a ritual, finished a 3000-word article on spicy herbs, written a lengthy LJ post on shopping, proofread an article on specially structured gardens and submitted that to Llewellyn, and hacked away at my backlog of email. So I'm going to post something quick and easy and already written, in case I get swamped with other stuff tomorrow.
A while back, Suzette Haden Elgin wrote an excellent and engrossing -- and very disturbing -- poem called "No Covenant." You need to read that first. Several of her readers got so fascinated wtih the setting and its core conundrum that we wanted to explore it further. She graciously opened it to fanfic and poetry. So here is mine, which takes place some time after "No Covenant." As always, comments are welcome but not required.
It is like birth.
It is like death.
Transcendent transformation,
implacable and utter –
we were all
caught off-guard by it.
We are formless,
yet not without feelings:
we can still suffer,
or rejoice.
We are disembodied,
yet not wholly desolate:
we can communicate,
and recall the world where
once we lived.
It was the mothers
who discovered motion.
When we learned to communicate,
we were all crying out in the void,
and the mothers knew the mind-voices
of their children, somehow.
Having no hands, still they yearned
to reach out – and learned
that love is something
the soul can get ahold of.
It can draw two people together,
like two astronauts climbing a rope
stretched taut between them in zero-g.
Formless mothers connected with
bodiless babies, and the crying
began to quiet.
“So that’s what love is for,”
someone said, “it allows us
to navigate through soulspace,
like legs used to let us walk on Earth.”
It was the philosophers
who reminded us of continuity.
“I think, therefore there is coherence,”
said one.
Then the scientists joined in:
“Where there is coherence,
there must be laws.
Where there are laws,
they can be discovered,
codified,
applied.”
So we began to turn our attention
from what we had lost
to what we might have gained.
A while back, Suzette Haden Elgin wrote an excellent and engrossing -- and very disturbing -- poem called "No Covenant." You need to read that first. Several of her readers got so fascinated wtih the setting and its core conundrum that we wanted to explore it further. She graciously opened it to fanfic and poetry. So here is mine, which takes place some time after "No Covenant." As always, comments are welcome but not required.
The Discovery of Motion
– inspired by “No Covenant” by Suzette Haden Elgin
– inspired by “No Covenant” by Suzette Haden Elgin
It is like birth.
It is like death.
Transcendent transformation,
implacable and utter –
we were all
caught off-guard by it.
We are formless,
yet not without feelings:
we can still suffer,
or rejoice.
We are disembodied,
yet not wholly desolate:
we can communicate,
and recall the world where
once we lived.
It was the mothers
who discovered motion.
When we learned to communicate,
we were all crying out in the void,
and the mothers knew the mind-voices
of their children, somehow.
Having no hands, still they yearned
to reach out – and learned
that love is something
the soul can get ahold of.
It can draw two people together,
like two astronauts climbing a rope
stretched taut between them in zero-g.
Formless mothers connected with
bodiless babies, and the crying
began to quiet.
“So that’s what love is for,”
someone said, “it allows us
to navigate through soulspace,
like legs used to let us walk on Earth.”
It was the philosophers
who reminded us of continuity.
“I think, therefore there is coherence,”
said one.
Then the scientists joined in:
“Where there is coherence,
there must be laws.
Where there are laws,
they can be discovered,
codified,
applied.”
So we began to turn our attention
from what we had lost
to what we might have gained.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Well done...
Date: 2007-08-09 12:10 pm (UTC)the soul can get ahold of."
That's a beautifully-crafted sequence.
Re: Well done...
Date: 2007-08-09 10:24 pm (UTC)I specifically wanted to use tactile language in this poem, because in a noncorporeal context, love is a kinetic function and not just an emotion. Using "touchy-feely" language to talk about something people think of as "a feeling" -- which is really more than that -- seemed like a good way to get the point across. It took some fiddling around to get it right, though, without being able to talk about the hands and skin and other body parts these characters no longer have. That challenge is part of what attacts me to this setting, too.
Re: Well done...
Date: 2007-08-19 06:52 pm (UTC)If you want a classic allusion, look for 'kindly enclyining'.