Meiners, R. K.

English

University of San Francisco

Ontario ReviewVolume 9 Fall-Winter 1978-79 Article 6April 2017Light, Lines, Points, PlanesR. K. MeinersFollow this and additional works at: http://repository.usfca.edu/ontarioreviewFor more information, please contact southerr@usfca.edu.Recommended CitationMeiners, R. K. (2017) "Light, Lines, Points, Planes," Ontario Review: Vol. 9 , Article 6.Available at: http://repository.usfca.edu/ontarioreview/vol9/iss1/6Light) Lines) Points) Planes (for Howard Nemerov) R. K. MEINERS 1 Here in the quiet night we bend above the desk at what we clerics call 'our work.' In this narrowing circle of light we track the lines creeping on their way out to the margin's vanishing point; or, conspiring with the hand and eye, the nervous mind must pull them back again to find the starting point in this central light, this nothing, that all surrounds, where we play we're Faustus trying to find the will to say in deinem Nichts hoff ich das All zu finden. 2 We have this paper, then. It lies there, slightly off the square from the table's edge, plane bordering planes, lines cutting lines. Through this illumined sphere run planes and lines in their silent war of geometries. Below us the fragile floor, and on it rests the paper, and the table, and the chair, and our restless selves, just above the surge of this shifting plane, this not so solid earth which is the only place we have to rest to draw these nightly tangents to our sphere. 22 Published by USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center,3 Above us in the waiting night the roof's intersecting planes confer and begin their mutual climb into the known universe. Known? Yes. This the game we work out here, at this point of light, in these quiet movements in the night, restless in a universe crowded with potential resting points: the game of words and laws and perspectives. Here the mind presides and thinks the eye, busy sawing space and time into crosscut vectors and intervals, our routine cosmic jigsaw. 4 That sounds too light. We need more light. M ehr Licht on these planes and lines. Our planes. Our lines. Huddled here, jointed, holding this bony sphere dreaming of hue and tone stretched from here to there. Ask again: what are we doing here in our usual place, the apex of this cone of light, this point of lines, point of planes, where each goes straight out from where we wait until it curves back through infinity? Here. At this table. With this paper. Now. Mind and eye and hand poised in this space. 23 http://repository.usfca.edu/ontarioreview/vol9/iss1/65 We say: in this sphere lies the seed of light that grows in lines into the fabled tr~e of our pictured world. Or: here perspective rushes into this place for us to find; the indivisible plane divides and All rushes inward toward its infinite. All these rhythms! I am drunk with metamorphoses. And the germ still somehow grows, into forms and words and fables and the resurrection of our dark loves and the rebirth of the world. 6 Sitting in this circle of light I dreamed the night and the comfortable darkness, where I sat musing under a fir tree in the autumn sunlight, circled by black holes, implosions, counter space, negative distance, unthinkable darkness beyond the stars. We live in these polarities, they in us. Sitting here I dreamed I drew Persephone sketching her image in points and lines that I called future, past, far, and near. Was it my dream, or was she dreaming me? 24 Published by USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center,

Light, Lines, Points, Planes

https://repository.usfca.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1239&amp;context=ontarioreview

Light, Lines, Points, Planes

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

University of San Francisco