Hugh,
In regard to favorite Transtromer poems, I could be well satisfied with the first of his poems that I read—to be held as an image in my mind—without words.
Weary of all who come with words,
words but no language,
I make my way to the snow-covered
island.
The untamed has no words.
The unwritten pages spread out on
every side!
I come upon the tracks of deer in
the snow.
Language but no words.
You asked for Haiku. Here is one:
language without words—
ancient arrowheads new-found:
fossil thoughts – mind prints
Picking up arrowheads that had been revealed by plowing a field, Henry David Thoreau said that arrowheads were “humanity inscribed on the face of the earth” as “mindprints” or “fossil thoughts”.
Time will soon destroy the works of famous painters and sculptors, but the Indian arrowhead will balk his efforts and Eternity will have to come to his aid. They are not fossil bones, but, as it were, fossil thoughts, forever reminding me of the mind that shaped them. I would fain know that I am treading in the tracks of human game—that I am on the trail of mind—and these little reminders never fail to set me right. When I see these signs I know that the subtle spirits that made them are not far off, into whatever form transmuted. What if you do plow and hoe amid them, and swear that not one stone shall be left upon another? They are only the less like to break in that case. When you turn up one layer you bury another so much the more securely. They are at peace with rust. This arrow-headed character promises to outlast all others. The larger pestles and axes may, perchance, grow scarce and be broken, but the arrowhead shall, perhaps, never cease to wing its way through the ages to eternity. It was originally winged for but a short flight, but it still, to my mind’s eye, wings its way through the ages, bearing a message from the hand that shot it. Myriads of arrow-points lie sleeping in the skin of the revolving earth, while meteors revolve in space. The footprint, the mind-print of the oldest men.
March 28, 1859 (From Henry David Thoreau’s Journal)
It could fairly be said that we, too, are on a similar journey—"on the trail of mind."
-- Charles
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