Kathleen Raine poem

The extraordinary thing about poetry is it cannot leave us feeling indifferent. If we make the effort to engage with it, whether we like it or not, it shakes up our way of seeing the world. What does it bring up in us?

It would be good to hear from those out there who connect to the site, and read it. Whatever you think or say is precious! Feel free to leave a comment. 

So here is a poem by Kathleen Raine. It captures something of those precious moments of aloneness when we can connect with what is beyond the usual daily restricted sense of self, and open to greater spaces. Music is the perfect comparison here. It can happen when we listen to music, and generally when we listen to the depth of life. 

 

                                 As a Child Forgotten... 

                                                               For Herbert Read

As a child forgotten in a room filled with dusk

Sitting before a mute keyboard strikes one piano key

Then listens as the throbbing note diminishes and vanishes

And into silence passes with the sound,

So those who listen after with a longing that goes beyond

The dying away for ever of the most beautiful and dear

May follow the heard into the unheard, into the stillness

Of incorporeal mental spaces unbounded, the heavens

Whence and whither the fleeting music of the world is speeding.

                       Kathleen Raine (1908-2003)