What Altar?

[Sitaram]

http://forum.poetryconnection.net/viewtopic.php?t=1105&view=previous


What Altar?

(written 6/14/03, 3:00pm)

What altar never alters
The real to seem,
Or, seemingly, too real,
So wafer-thin
That one may for the first time see through sin,
A seam (or wrinkle if you will
Within the fabric of causality)
Which reels by arkfuls fishers of mere men
Back from their self-imposed reality
And sends them reeling in the tapestry
Of some unseemly dream?


Thus, our winter's abstinence
Blossomed to a spring of self-indulgence.


We stumbled in a stupor of sobriety
And, tripping over God's own piety,
We fell
Headlong into a caricature of hell.


- Sitaram

[mono]

Wow, amazing, Sitaram. I had to read the poem fairly slowly, especially with the first strophe, but it flowed very nicely, regardless, and you have line breaks in all the right places, never losing or confusing your reader.
Just out of curiosity, what struck your inspiration for this particular work?

[Sitaram]

Dear Mono,

Thank you so much for reading, taking the time to write and for your
kind words of encouragement. I am age 56 now. I only have about 60
poems which are of any real interest. I started really writing poems
during the summer between my Sophomore and Junior year in high
school. My English teacher was amazed at what I had produced over
the summer. He said that my previous year's poems were
"throw-aways" but the work over the summer was of value. That
Junior year, I won two state awards in a poetry contest.

I cannot just write poetry any time I choose. When I get an idea, an
inspiration then I write it down as fast as I can write, and it is usually
done within an hour or so. It seems to come from "somewhere else."

Many of my poems have to do with religion or spirituality. I have
been preoccupied with various religions and philosophies and
spirituality for much of my life. I shall next post here a poem entitled
"Is Revelation Rhyme?" which is also on the topic of religion and is
perhaps somewhat convtroversial. I had thought to post it this
morning, but I did not want the forum to fear that I was suddenly
flooding it with poetry posts.

I find that I can write prose at will, and work at it daily, and hammer
away at it like a blacksmith at his forge. But poetry is like a crystal
which is there in the morning; something fragile of the moment; a
spider's web at dawn, dew-bespangled and rainbowed for one instant
of the sunrise.

In fact, as I think about this topic, I am reminded of a piece of prose
which I wrote entitled "prose as pose and pause." It is at my site,

http://toosmallforsupernova.org/page003.htm

but I shall just paste the pertinent excerpt here:




Morality is a game which only makes sense when played by the rules
of free will and for high stakes.

The playing field may be as small as a four foot square prison cell, or
as large as the surface of the earth or even as geometrically
infinitesimal as one's point of view.

Freedom has rules. There is a law of liberty. Even chaos and anarchy
have structure and consequences.

This idea has come to me on December 29, 2003, as I awoke from
sleep. From where and how does such an idea come to us?

Ideas seem to arise and take shape from the ever-changing and
fleeting patterns of thoughts and feelings and moods in the
kaleidoscope of consciousness, caught by the snapshot photographer,
language, posing for us only once in prose, and never to reappear
again if we do not pause to write them down.

That prose is pose and pause gives us pause for thought.

Who or what has set this kaleidoscope in motion?
It is the movie "Cube" which served for me as a metaphor for the
genesis of ideas from thoughts.

The cube was a prison and a puzzle of thousands of rooms constantly
changing in position. We do not know how we got there, in a room in
that cube. We do not know why we are there. The cube has no
purpose, but our decisions and choices weave the fabric of meaning
and purpose which becomes the tapestry of our character.

There was only one exit, bridge, escape, which was freedom,
liberation, salvation, heaven, for it is called by many names.
One exit, one solution, but countless paths which lead to that solution.
The inside of the cube seems at times like hell but at other times
simply like life itself.

We are constantly faced with decisions great and small. Even inaction
is a course of action. Even silence is a statement, a reply to the
invisible master of the Koan of Existence.

Even our decision to get out of bed and cross the street can be
monumental, resulting in death or resulting in a new and different life,
a rebirth.

Had I stayed in bed and fallen back to sleep, this idea might be gone,
lost, never to reappear in the ever-changing patterns of that
kaleidoscope.

I made a choice to find pen and paper and search for words.

Such thoughts are fragile as a gossamer moment strung between frail
reeds, bejeweled with morning dew, yet once captured, written down,
having taken shape and final form, they are cast forever as a
juggernaut in monumental bronze, lumbering about the earth like a
behemoth Godzilla, toppling citadels and empires.

It is our illusion that we create and author such ideas. We are a
conduit, a focal point, a lens. We do not cause but rather, simply, we
allow to happen. We become quiet enough for the silence to be heard.

We may give birth to the smallest mustard seed of a notion which in
turn may grow to something either majestic or monstrous, something
which overshadows us and empowers us, or leaves us powerless,
imprisons and enslaves us or frees us. And our only weapon against
its greatness is mute silence and abstinence, denying the seed its
thimble of soil and drop of dew.

Sutras always begin "I have heard it said." Oral traditions always give
birth to religions with laws etched in tables of stone which guide
empires of giants with feet of clay.



As I reread my post, and yours, and my poem, I realize in part an answer to your question. I spend several years in Greek and Russian Orthodox monasteries, during my mid 20's. I came to know many monastics, ascetics, renunciates.

In my 40's I came to know many Buddhist and Hindu renunciates. Over a period of 30 years, I saw those who were successful for their entire lives at their vocation, and those who abandoned it after as long as ten or twenty years.