The natural mind (and mindful nature).

It’s a common poetic device to describe the mind as a piece of nature. Or vice versa, to ascribe mental states to nature. The latter is sometimes called animistic. But I don’t think the practice has any metaphysical implications in itself. People might be inclined to a certain ontology, of course. But poems don’t prove anything,

Neither is metaphysical conviction fairly often the prime motivation for linking mind and nature, I believe. As (walking or stationary) minds, we are constantly surrounded by natural things (whether natural with a capital N or artefacts). Hence it is quite ‘natural’ that we feel inclined sometimes to tie both together, and that it feels apt to do so.

You will find no anthology on this. The reason is that it is rarely ‘the theme’ of a poem, but frequently something that operates in his background. I give you some examples:

THE BREAK

All month eating the heart out,
smothering in a fierce insomnia …
First the long, spongy summer, drying
out by fits and starts, till a morning
torn off another calendar
when the wind stiffens, chairs
and tables rouse themselves
in a new, unplanned light
and ‘a word flies like a dry leaf’ down the hall
at the bang of a door…

Then break, October, speak,
non-existent and damning clarity.
Stare me down, thrust
your tongue against mine, break
day, let me stand up
like a table or a chair
in a cold room with the sun beating in
full on the dusty panes.

Adrienne Rich

LANDSCAPE

I am clothed, unclothed
by racing cloud shadows
Or else disintegrate
Like a hillside neighbour
Erased by sea and mist.

A place of dispersals
Where the wind fractures
Flight-feathers, Insect-wings
And ‘rips thought to tatters
Like a fuchsia petal’.

Michael Longley

THE PARADOX TREE

Now I see the bows and arrows, the catapults and vital purpose, the myriad possibilities.
Now the leaves have fallen,
revealing the curvatures and tangled complexities of ‘the paradox tree.
Its nature is to bend
and bring buds and branches
into the service of animals and humanity. A fine line between use and service,
love and peace, war and hate.
Between giving up and sacrifice’. Between nest and shelter.
Dendrite branches make mathematical patterns, coaxing blue from pale winter skies. They shield satellite-marked houses from each other’s sight, blind eyes with lances and separate with fences.
Now gather in baskets the nodes of divine life,
and burn your weapons around campfires,
singing and strumming guitars, drumming out unity.
I see the hardening lignen,
the pulsating sap within,
the parts dividing and the wholeness,
in stages: a signpost, a railway sleeper,
a vision song, a messenger with open arms.

Sam Burcher

And finally, a poem for my anthology:

MR. COGITO AND THE MOVEMENT OF THOUGHT

Thoughts cross the mind
a common idiom has it

the common idiom
overestimates thoughts’ mobility

a majority of them
stand motionless
in a dull landscape
of bleak hillocks
and withered trees

sometimes they reach
the rushing river of someone else’s thoughts
they stand on the bank`on one leg
like hungry herons

mournfully
they recall dried-up springs

they circle around
looking for grains

they don’t cross
because they won’t get anywhere
they don’t cross
because there’s nowhere to get to

they sit on the rocks
wringing their hands

under the low
overcast
firmament
of the skull

Zbigniew Herbert

A wooden die (by Zbigniew Herbert)

One of the reasons why I embarked on a study in philosophy was a fascination for objects. For long I harboured the thought that it was seemingly impossible to grasp the essence of an object. If you attempt to penetrate an object by cutting it in two pieces, you do not get any nearer to its inside: inescapably you are confronted with its outside again.

Needless to say the study of philosophy did not in the slightest help me to resolve this riddle. Worse, it didn’t even foster that type of thought, so I concluded – hopefully premature – that it was unphilosophical. So what a revelation to find this observation again in a very short poem by a very great poet, moreover, expressed in a way that far exceeds my imaginative capabilities. I quote it here in full:

A Wooden Die (Zbigniew Herbert.)

A wooden die can be described only from without. We are therefore condemned to eternal ignorance of its essence. Even if it is cut in two, immediately its inside becomes a wall and there occurs the lightning-swift transformation of a mystery into a skin.

For this reason it is impossible to lay foundations for the psychology of a stone ball, of an iron bar, of a wooden cube.