ECHOES OF MEMORY

To speak the truth, I think that people ought to be upset, …; I think that life is so important and, in its workings, so upsetting that nobody should be spared.

J.R. Ackerley to Stephen Spender – 1955

When the light of hope, in dreams, possesses a soul
There will be a time when they will come to pass, for
In those who seek the truth in every place of life,
And see beyond the places where she does not lay,
Are the echoes of memory, dreams waiting with patience,
Fully open to seize the moment when poetic words live.

Then in speaking the truth, now fully seen in her ways,
The upset and fears from ego’s harm grasp and hold;
Life is too important, and people ought to feel the pain,
As we are not things but collective intrusions-of-selves
Each finding ways to live with our hopes and dreams
Clumsily making noises that attempt to make us whole.

And within the noiseless moments with self, we betray
The ecstatic pleasure of being with others and things
As the unconscious boundaries of self-hood shout out
From a distant echo of another memory, torn from us,
And the two come together to find a new place in self.
Oh God let me see just once the true-ness of another.

Let me see through, without words, to the beating heart
That pumps and drives the movement of our times
And in that moment accept that noticing the movement,
In our habitual patterning, is the source of dreams;
Seeing and hearing these opportunities to be at one,
Beyond self-hood, is the joy that she brings with love.

David Scanlon – England – (1963 - )

Scanlon. D (2018) Timeless Truths. The Foolish Poet Press, Wilmslow, England. ECHOES OF MEMORY. Page Number 6.

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