Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Arlene Corwin writes

The Particles Of God

The particles of God are falling on my head.
They’re falling on the living, probably the dead;
On believers, non-believers; equal particles they fall–
They’re always falling on and in and through the body wall.

God is particles of oneness. There are parallels galore.
When the atom showed its kernel and revealed there was more
To meet the eye, a kind of onion-layered door
Was opened there inside the mind as just the metaphor
For simpletons like me. God energy,

With big or little G;
Living, knowing particles that have no personality
But which, if I’d clean up my act,
Would mystically reveal the fact
That they, the particles and I, have one identity.

I’m trying to arrange and rearrange my head instead,
Make it more receptive than a means for daily bread–
A conscious sponge, a large receptor,
Image-making faculty a particle collector.

Each impulse must be pure, for
We’re in areas of karmic justice and reward;
And particles with qualities inherent in our race:
Areas of mercy, all the virtues, love and grace -
I’d rather not involve them - just assume that they exist.
It’s the God without the person that this poem has gently kissed: 
Ever-present particles that are the living’s gist.
[Earth, Dust, Atoms, Particles… The Spanish painter Tapies was, in one of his artistic stages, taken with Buddhistic philosophy: When I Googled him, I was reminded of a poem I first wrote in 1994, revised in 2018 and again today in 2020. You may recognise the Vedanta philosophy in me, a philosophy that grabbed me in the early 50’s and has never really let go. Both earthy and spiritual, it has always suited my person and personality.]
Capgirat, (detail) 2005, Antoni Tàpies, © Comissió Tàpies/VEGAP Courtesy Timothy Taylor
Capgirat [detail] -- Antoni Tàpies

2 comments:

  1. In 1949 Antoni Tàpies i Puig was a Catalan artist helped poet Joan Brossa found the Dau al Set ("the 7th face of the dice") movement in protest against the governmental endorsement and propaganda art sanctioned by the administration of Francisco Franco. He left the group in 1952 as he moved away from Surrealist/Dadist expression toward informalism (dubbed "art autre" [other art] by Michel Tapié de Céleyran); Tàpies' style (known as pintura matèrica) incorporated non-artistic materials such as clay and marble dust, waste paper, string, and rags, into the paintings; around 1970 he began employing more substantial objects in his paintings, such as parts of furniture. In 2010 king Juan Carlos gave him the hereditary title Marquess of Tàpies, 2 years before his death.

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  2. Vedanta ("end of the Vedas") is the most prominent of the 6 schools of Hindu philosophy. It contains many sub-traditions, all of which developed on the basis of a common textual connection called the Prasthanatrayi (the Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras, and the Bhagavad Gita).

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