poem or essay on Darkness

Subject: poem or essay on Darkness
From: GUEST,Susan-MArie
Date: 27 Oct 04 - 11:05 PM

I'm usually asking for song suggestions but this time I need a reading on darkness - the GOOD aspects of darkness. Healing darkness, nurturing darkness, the darkness of germination and rest. No scary stuff. Tried the internet but couldn't get past the vampire and S&M pages. Figured there's a good chance some Mucatters could point me in the right direction. Many thanks!

Subject: RE: poem or essay on Darkness
From: Peace
Date: 27 Oct 04 - 11:18 PM

Subject: RE: poem or essay on Darkness
From: Micca
Date: 28 Oct 04 - 03:47 AM

Susan Marie, this might be close to what you describe "Until The Dark Time ends"

Subject: RE: poem or essay on Darkness
From: freda underhill
Date: 28 Oct 04 - 08:08 AM

From THE SILVER SWAN
by Kenneth Rexroth


An hour before sunrise,
The moon low in the East,
Soon it will pass the sun.
The Morning Star hangs like a
Lamp, beside the crescent,
Above the greying horizon.
The air warm, perfumed,
An unseasonably warm,
Rainy Autumn, nevertheless
The leaves turn color, contour
By contour down the mountains.
I watch the wavering,
Coiling of the smoke of a
Stick of temple incense in
The rays of my reading lamp.
Moonlight appears on my wall
As though I raised it by
Incantation. I go out
Into the wooded garden
And walk, nude, except for my
Sandals, through light and dark banded
Like a field of sleeping tigers.
Our raccoons watch me from the
Walnut tree, the opossums
Glide out of sight under the
Woodpile. My dog Ch'ing is asleep.
So is the cat. I am alone
In the stillness before the
First birds wake. The night creatures
Have all gone to sleep. Blackness
Looms at the end of the garden,
An impenetrable cube.
A ray of the Morning Star
Pierces a shaft of moon-filled mist.
A naked girl takes form
And comes toward me — translucent,
Her body made of infinite
Whirling points of light, each one
A galaxy, like clouds of
Fireflies beyond numbering.
Through them, star and moon
Still glisten faintly. She comes
To me on imperceptibly
Drifting air, and touches me
On the shoulder with a hand
Softer than silk. She says
"Lover, do you know what Heart
You have possessed?"
Before I can answer, her
Body flows into mine, each
Corpuscle of light merges
With a corpuscle of blood or flesh.
As we become one the world
Vanishes. My self vanishes.
I am dispossessed, only
An abyss without limits.
Only dark oblivion
Of sense and mind in an
Illimitable Void.
Infinitely away burns
A minute red point to which
I move or which moves to me.
Time fades away. Motion is
Not motion. Space becomes Void.
A ruby fire fills all being.
It opens, not like a gate,
Like hands in prayer that unclasp
And close around me.
Then nothing. All senses ceased.
No awareness, nothing,
Only another kind of knowing
Of an all encompassing
Love that has consumed all being.
Time has had a stop.
Space is gone.
Grasping and consequence
Never existed. The aeons have fallen away.

Suddenly I am standing
In my garden, nude, bathed in
The hot brilliance of the new
Risen sun — star and crescent gone into light.

Subject: RE: poem or essay on Darkness
From: freda underhill
Date: 29 Oct 04 - 06:48 AM

http://www.1stpm.org/articles/darkness.html

above is a link to an essay on comfort in darkness.

and below, ...

COMFORT OF WINTER

Winter was a comfort,
darkness gently wrapped
around my waning self.
In gray light, soft snow
fell outside my window
and darkness came early
bringing me rest.

I almost missed spring,
a bud on the tree,
a crocus or two.
It dashed by the panes,
so fleeting
that I was left unprepared

when summer arrived.
Defiantly,
it glares through the glass
Too brilliant,
the multitude of flowers.
Sun glistens
off leaves and grass
jarring my vision.
Heat drains
away my spirit.

So I wait
for autumn's release of fire,
bringing me back,
to comfort of winter.

© 1996 Anne Johnson

Subject: RE: poem or essay on Darkness
From: hesperis
Date: 29 Oct 04 - 02:08 PM

I and my husband call that the Wild Dark. It's not evil, it's very strong and primal. Good to see that other people are aware that Dark is something other than Evil!

Subject: RE: poem or essay on Darkness
From: PoppaGator
Date: 29 Oct 04 - 02:27 PM

Jesse Colin Young and the Youngbloods had a song called "Darkness, Darkness" that I used to sing pretty regularly years ago. Can't remember much of it now. I'll do a search for the lyrics and/or melody and come back to post if I'm successful.

Young was a middling-famous folkie in the early 60s, notable for at least one blues-ish composition, "Four in the Mornin' [and the water is pourin' down]." He later moved from New York to San Francisco and jumped on the folk-rock bandwagon, forming his band the Youngbloods. Their one huge hit was, of course, "Get Together" ("C'mon, people now, smile on each other, everybody get together and love one another right now").

I read somewhere recently -- probably here at Mudcat -- that Jessie's in Hawaii now, in the gourmet-coffee-growing biz.

Subject: Lyr Add: DARKNESS, DARKNESS (Jesse Colin Young)
From: PoppaGator
Date: 29 Oct 04 - 03:20 PM

Here you go: "Darkness, Darkness":

(As a bonus, I'm also pasting in the next song listed on the lyrics page I found, interesting because the title/topic is the exact opposite -- "Sunlight")

Darkness, darkness
Jesse Colin Young

Darkness, darkness, be my pillow,
Take my hand, and let me sleep.
In the coolness of your shadow,
In the silence of your deep.
Darkness, darkness, has me yearning,
For things that cannot be.
Keep me my mind from constant turning,
Toward the things it cannot see,
Things it cannot see,
Things it cannot see.

Darkness, darkness, long and lonesome,
As the day brings the pain.
I have found the edge of stillness,
I live in the depth of fear.
Darkness, darkness, be my blanket,
Cover me with endless night,
Take away the pain that flows away,
Fill the emptiness with bright,
Emptiness with bright,
Emptiness with bright.

Darkness, darkness, be my pillow,
Take my hand, and let me sleep.
In the coolness of your shadow,
In the silence of your deep.
Darkness, darkness, be my blanket,
Cover me with endless night,
Take away the pain that flows away,
Fill the emptiness with bright,
Emptiness with bright,
Emptiness with bright.



Sunlight                                                               Jesse Colin Young

Have you seen the sunlight pouring through her hair
And felt her warm mouth on ya in the summer's air
Running in a field of brown, laughing, rolling on the ground now
Smiling as she pulls you down
That's the way she feels about you
That's the way she feels about you

If your dreams should wake you shaking in the night
She can touch your face and take away all fright
Like a tree in a meadow wind she will bend to take you in
Makes no difference where you been
That's the way she feels about you
That's the way she feels about you--yeah

If you wake up screaming, scared about what you're dreaming
You know she is there, she can share
You're aware she cares about you

In the morning wake up laughing with the day
She will smile and ask you with her eyes to stay
Like the sunshine warms the sand
She will touch you with her hand now
Touching makes you understand
That's the way she feels about you
That's the way she feels about you

La la la la la la
La la la la la la

If you wake up screaming, scared about what you're dreaming
You know she is there, she can share
You're aware she cares about you

In the morning wake up laughing with the day
She will smile and ask you with her eyes to stay
Like the sunshine warms the sand
She will touch you with her hand now
Touching makes you understand
Oh that's the way she feels about you
That's the way she feels about you--yeah
That's the way she feels about you
That's the way she feels about you

Subject: RE: poem or essay on Darkness
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 29 Oct 04 - 03:44 PM

You darkness, that I come from,
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes
a circle of light for everyone,
And then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything:
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them! -
powers and people -

and it is possible a great energy
is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.

(Rainier Maria Rilke - You Darkness)