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Crossing Over
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*by Fatima Ray*
At eighteen waiting for the light to turn green at the intersection in the
big city thirty miles from home. Observing all the people waiti...
5 months ago
TopBlogs.com.ph
The thoughts of a dying man...
I close my eyes before the panorama
Of the world outside in humdrum drama
To see a vista of unspoiled felicity
Where vibrant laughter and flowers bloom eternally
All scenes so ethereal, they all sway;
Vivid like my dream as they play.
I close my eyes from the world out there:
A disgracefully numb eden, a place of stained cashmere;
The wall between your world and mine isn't trivial
Yours is a world so human, mine isn't fluvial;
You're facing a creek and yet you still whine
While my lips are dry, yearning for some wine.
With this borrowed existence I couldn't recover
I watch through the window a believer
When this world that's lead by men
Forsake me like an abating, fading whirlwind
I may perish in this room unremembered
But my heart and soul are unencumbered.
Photograph by Tim Young. Please CLICK HERE to visit the owner's Flickr site. Thanks!
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This is a poem about a lone, dying man whom was lying in a hospital bed, without a family or relatives to visit and see him. In a world where he felt physical loneliness, he found inner joy within himself by looking at the things around him that would instead make him happy deep inside. He felt that the physical world was so harsh and unkind to him because of all his physical emptiness, yet he find consolation on the immaterial and nonphysical things that his heart could feel and see. And for him to satisfy his emotional longings and hunger, he told himself that somehow he was living equally with those people who are so bounty with love and care but chose to ignore them.
The first stanza of the poem is made up of six lines, each with seven words. In here, the man depicted on the poem was looking at the world in a kind of perspective and approach in which he was able to understand the real beauty and true meaning behind it. In here he narrated how he would look at the world differently for him to find contentment, satisfaction, and happiness that he would have never experienced.
The second stanza is constructed with the same number of lines, but each with nine words. In here was his comparison between the world that everybody lived in and the kind of world he actually lived and experienced.
"A disgracefully numb eden" refers to the beautiful world we are living in but is plagued by so many people who live only for their own ("Stained cashmere").
When he said "Yours is a world so human, mine isn't fluvial", he meant that the real world was flawed by the character of the people, while the world he actually lived was not filled with the luxury of physical and emotional wealth.
The phrase "You face a creek, and yet you still whine While my lips are dry, yearning for some wine." is actually a connotation that refers to love, care, and all the other emotions than a person can give or receive, but people thought less of their essence and true meaning, and even give little importance to them. While, on the other hand, the dying man was feeling a constant hunger for these emotions from people around him and was longing to feel them in his life.
The third stanza is constructed just like the first stanza. This stanza, however, was his self-assertion that though he had never felt most of the things that people feel and have, and though he might have not done something significant enough to prove his existence, yet he still believed that he lived a life so worthwhile.