While the world moved

He rested there, silently
While the world moved
Patience was now his
No thoughts of laurels
Past, present, future

Only now, the chase, the word
Once representing a divine gift
Now, simple charm, endearing
Had the word lost its power
As he?

Ah yes, charisma!
Conjuring the night, divinely
The equestrian of dreams, the Knight’s mare
The oneironaut navigating the sleeping seas
Leading, conquering the shores unknown

He rested there, knowing
While the world moved
Gone, to the other shore
Shadows and light, contrast and color
Projection, projection, projection

Post Script

This poem begins with a figure at rest while the world continues around him. The stillness may be patience, exhaustion, death, or release. He no longer pursues laurels, and past, present, and future gather into a single now.

From there, the poem chases a word: charisma. The word once referred to a gift of grace, but in ordinary speech it came to mean personal charm. The poem asks whether the word has lost something of its old power, just as the resting figure appears to have lost his. Yet the older meaning returns through dream language. Charisma conjures the night, the imagined Knight’s mare, and the oneironaut crossing sleeping seas.

The final movement reaches “the other shore,” but does not decide whether that shore belongs to death, dream, awakening, or representation. The accompanying image helps preserve that uncertainty. Ultraviolet, visible, and infrared information has been assigned to color channels to produce a scene the unaided human eye could not otherwise see. Its beauty is real, but the colors are also a translation. This gives the closing repetition its force: projection, projection, projection.

Read beside A silent pounce, the poem becomes part of a small meditation on stillness and motion. Here the world moves around a resting figure. There, stillness gathers itself into the possibility of action.

Image credit: UV-Vis-IR Homestead in Montana (2008), by Spigget. Ultraviolet is mapped to blue, visible light to green, and infrared to red. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Source: Wikimedia Commons.