The root of poetry is in prophecy.
In the present age, science is held to be the tool by which our universe will be explained. However, our dislocated and disenfranchised selves tell us the opposite. While science (and its sister, technology), order and rule our lives, we increasingly look for something “outside”.
The soul is searching for sustenance.
Science doubts itself. Look at the vast project being undertaken in Switzerland, search for the Higgs boson, so called progenitor of ‘Dark Matter’, the substance that we are told fills most of the universe. Why?
Science can’t explain everything: UFO sightings, crop circles, synchronicity, love, poetry are all outside its realm.
Reiki, near death experiences, ghosts – we are getting closer to the mystery. Our conscious sense allow only one tenth of one percent of all information reaching us to be recognised. What about the rest?
We know that by meditation and other therapies unauthorized by science we can reach the soul. we are also aware of the unsatisfying clamour of modern life. We should be more aware that poetry is a way into the mystical world.
Here’s a proviso – I am not talking about verse here, being the regular and eventually monotonous ‘mnemonic’ form of the art. This, like modern life, is eventually unsatisfying and lends itself more to the cult of celebrity rather than art – no, I talk about the finer parts of Shakespeare, Ted Hughes, Rumi, Lorca, Zbignieuw Herbert, Yeats: poets who have heard the call and pushed their poetic abilities to the limit.
Closer to prophecy than science, and the message is: Nothing is clear.