(mysterium) – (poetry)

Southern night. Crimea
Ivan Aivazovsky, 1848

1 – Taken from Camilo Pessanha’s Clepsydra, this stanza translates roughly as such:
“Sails the vessel. Over clear water
One can see the seafloor, of fine sand…
— Impeccable peregrine figure,
The endless distance that separates us!”

Strung together strangely from a restricted form, (mysterium) is to be part of three independent but thematically linked compositions illumed by the mystical phrase “Mysterium, tremendum et fascinans“, though I believe no unique part is to be distinguished by its focus, rather, to be analysed conically, which was a welcomed formal challenge. Echoes of antediluvian lyricism add to a sentiment of distensibility: verses are presented as rhythmic pairs with a distance that forbids any true pairing, colouring a sense of ruthful or dramaturgic positions of meaning. But the clearings where the metric hits are whetted blades, as shocks of approximation or complete collisions.
Another attempt in form was made by an over-preference of the first person — which is my most used — and shall be followed by one mostly written in second and another in third, in the order given by the alighting phrase, as to suggest degrees of repulsion and fascination with the mere instrument of gramatical person and without having to reduce the poems by contaminating them directly with what are otherwise automatic associations. The first person was, obviously, the hardest, and had to necessarily integrate the blindness of which it stands as the regent of. Not so much a blindness of sense, but one of direction, since that too integrates its native meaning. Either way, returning to creativity after dormancy can feel terribly artificial, but it does seem necessary.

Thanks for reading,
João-Maria.