Shadow-knowledge

In response to

At Guy’s Hospital, by Jo Shapcott

Come in, come in

my name is Doctor Keats,

I’m glad you found your way

safely to the Southwark Wing,

Blue Zone, because the online

map can seem a bit

fevered to the poorly,

the way it swipes and zooms

under your finger-trembles.

Sit down: you are pale, your pulse

is fretful and when I ask you what

you see when your eyes are

closed I want you to tell me

about the pink wall of your eyelids

the veins and tendrils and floaters

not night-time in an English wood

thick with such life your ears and nose

send purple, sunburn and thickets

to fill your brain with Old Nature

only a shadow-knowledge to us now.

You ask me about your prognosis

because I can see inside your body:

I have built four you a magnetic resonance

imaging machine and will thread

you through it, open you out

in sequences, all your soft artifacts

and concurrent planes pouring into

the screen. You will cease. That much

is clear. If I were you I would stay

melodious for as long as you’ve got,

blushful and ready to be shaken, always,

by your first love, your first sleep.

Ancient. Almost there, still, but not quite. Another life. A distant memory. I know it happened, but I can only see it through darkened glass. Covered up, somehow. But covered by whom? I did it! It was me! She yells at me from some place deep within, but I have to cover up everything her words mean. Everything they bring back to mind. The knowledge is there, but I cannot face it. Not anymore, because what’s the point? Why look at the same old movies when there’s so much stuff out there? Why keep looking at the past when I love the present, this present. Here. Now. Me. Us. Love all of it. Silent AND melodious.

That old stuff, you see, that happened to someone else, practically another time, another country, a lifetime away and so it should be treated. Irrelevant now. No longer current, no longer important. We were young. I was young. Too young to know what I was doing. But that’s ok. We all have our boxfuls of regrets, I know that now. I understand. I accept. I accept the burden. Thank you very much.

If knowledge were to sit in shadow

Only Keats would know

How the blood flows

Through the meta/physical poet

To the elemental hillside

Where the damsel resides.

Consternation!

Written in ink across a fevered brow

How time gives the organs their value

Seen darkly in the sand time -

Rock.

I deliver my lines to order now

Given patterns driven by hammering blows.

Ease up, there, sheriff.

I have no energy left for your control.

I am fluid now.

My shadow swims into the dark.

I know and I don’t know.

Acknowledged, you survive.

There, funnily, I am willing.

Given, I am received.

Shadowed, I am lit.

Wisdom lurking there in the periphery, the shadows, the dark. Finger puppets on the wall, casting a larger than life impression. Knowing shadows that beckon, lure us with their soft voices, to sleep. Fretful, fevered or melodious sleep. Finger trembling puppets. Do you know what you are doing? Do I trust you? You who wields the pen between your fingers. The dark ink shadows on the pale paper wall; wall between my thoughts, my words and beyond. Making an impression on the page. Does it matter? Does the page seek to be impressed? Shadows leave no impression other than in the mind. Fleeting, darkly, across the pale screen, troubling eyelids. Where to go now? Where do the shadows go? Evaporate, recede, morph into light? Or do they take up residence within? The people who think/believe the camera steals your soul with a flash of light. Captured. Captured, infiltrated, by the shadows; trapped within the shadows. Shadow-knowledge. Knowing within the shadows. Trying to find one’s way in, break the walnut shell, find the brain nut within. Feed myself, my mind, my soul, with the wizened oily nut. Sustain myself. Shadows. Fears lurking in the shadows; fear of the shadows. Knowledge in our fears. No point in being afraid of something you have no reason to think you will ever encounter. I fear the things I am secretly drawn to. I fear animals, their teeth, their hooves, their indifference, their unrestraint, their power. Claws. The capacity to tear, to rip to shreds, to predate, to satisfy one’s own needs, ensure one’s own survival. I want to be more enthused to action to all that will ensure my survival – not at all costs, but more than I often care. I want to be one of the herd, to connect and belong. I want to feel sure-footed, accepting of my capacity to bite, to trample, and yet know I have restraint, I will only do so if under threat. I will own my power. The shadow looms larger than the self so often. A companion by my side. You are there with me when the sun shines.

Those things we know deeply, that form out core being much more than surface knowledge but much less clear. It feels like it’s the momentum of the pull towards this kind of knowledge that pulls this last poem along. And, for me, that pulls me along deeply if I pay attention. If I close my eyes and breath and listen. It feels this kind of shadow knowledge is what keeps my heart beating and my blood flowing and these can stagnate if I focus on the knowledge knowledge for too long. Old nature feels to me like a wild woodland inviting me in, full of shadows, shadows that help me feel who I am. I feel like Dr Keats. Drawn to this. Drawn to sitting in the wild to seeing the shadow knowledge of the people around me, the patients around me. But it’s not about me. The MRI is not for my visual amusement, although surely I feel it’s good to acknowledge the beauty. So, where to find the balance? No resolution there either.

Sometimes, at the end of a hard day, I’ll sit and try to make sense of what’s occurred. When I finally go to bed, it’s with the hope of sleeping and freeing my shadow knowledge to surface in dreams. Occasionally, the dreams present moments of clarity, when decisions are formed and resolutions are made that should be followed through. But awakening comes and the clear decisions, resolutions and the shadow knowledge, fade away in the light of the new born day. Some dreams have persistence that dispels the shadow and brings the knowledge into focus. This helps us find the certainty we constantly seek.