THE MEANING OF PEACE I encountered tonight the meaning of peace, by accident. I went outside at midnight and stumbled into the eve of creation, a voyeur of a sacred conversation deep in session. I found myself looking upon the clean page of a cool and virgin stillness in the dead of night that carried no fragrance, that did not reach out to touch me; New, like the world was, faceless, before anything wore a name. I learned this: There is a room in the soul, a womb of sanctuary, a deep well of replenishment, for which light is an intrusion upon the perfection of darkness. And sound, any except the faint rumour of your own breath, an assault, as of blood spilled upon the hallowed ground of undulating silence. Something in me nodded an acceptance and turned around to head for home. I knew one thing: This is the door to which I would be longing to return for the rest of my life. The words of prayer spoke themselves, my tongue a doting witness: Tonight, let this be my home, even as it is the house, I make ready in me. © Rocco Jarman
I often say poetry is a journalism of the soul. All we can do sometimes is get out of the way and ask ourselves, “What is this?”
We don’t always have our work shoes on, sometimes we stumble barefoot into a moment, and given the inevitable way we lean a little too far into what we seek to witness, given the way surprise can allow you to be new again and with it, everything to be new also, we sometimes arrive at the unfolding in a way where we get to see backstage, the private life of the undressed moment.
These glimpses are also utterances where we overhear ourself saying something equally surprising in return, an unbidden answer to the simple prayer of asking with our whole presence: “What is this?”