Category: Poetry
LUMINOSITY
“There’s something special about hardcover books,” he said, holding up a book with a bright white dustjacket. It had a shininess about it, a brightness that showed the title up in sharp relief. The old-fashioned font read, “The Book of Luminous Things”. Slipping off the dustjacket the book had a warm golden glow that invited one to open it and read some of the poems it guarded within its covers. I itched to hear some of those ‘luminous things’.
I’d been looking forward to listening to this Minister’s sermon as he is a literary man who often used poetry to illustrate his message. I was not to be disappointed. He spoke about the Wedding at Canaa and Christ’s first miracle, turning water into wine. Carefully he wove in the imagery of luminosity, using allegory to develop the idea of the wine/water miracle as the portent of a new world order, inviting us to come with him on this dream-journey where all things seem possible and beautiful and luminous with hope and potential. He spoke as only a Welshman could, using words vibrant and dripping with imagery as he sang/spoke his poem-sermon. I closed my eyes and pictured the scene. I could see the chaos, the disappointment all round as the wedding party ran out of wine. At the order, servants filled tall earthen pitchers with cool, clear water. I pictured bright glistening droplets on the floor as they stood back solemnly watching the MC perform the tasting ceremony. I laughed with delight along with them when he exclaimed with pure pleasure that they’d saved the best wine for last! This surely was a luminous moment. Then the dream drifted on, lifting up images and thoughts of good and bright and joyous things and I was carried on that dream-journey by the flow of his speech.
It was his cadence and rhythm. In my mind’s eye the words became a visual pattern of long golden sentences forming a paragraph, measured and steady
which suddenly
dissolved into
a spiral staircase of
short five syllable lines
of poetry with rhyme
and metre and rich
with imagery
before returning once more to the even narrative beat back in Ancient Canaa. This pattern was repeated over and over as the layers of the story developed in complexity.
Listening I marvelled at his breathing. Here was a Shakespearean actor, speaking the lines of the bard without relying on the lines to breathe, but rolling on to the end with emphasised stress and unstressed as the words sang themselves from the page. Here too was an Aborigine blowing for all he was worth on his didge, his circular breathing making spirals and whorls in the air as the music he followed in his head became pictures of sweet sound and melancholy yearning for the listener floating through his dream. They all were luminous things!