The world's abyssal unconsciousness

is filled with us;

pyrotechnics for great voids, vast stages

Though the tangle of sprawling problems,

which had made me exasperatingly dependent,

yesterday resolved itself in a rare stroke of magic,

I still wake in today's heavy enclosure

of bottomless de-dreaming,

driven by late night & dawn

as I'm released from directionless cave systems

at the merciful grace of awakening, each feeling leaden,

the acrid scent of death's sweat around me;

its wild eye roaming over blisters & fungal sores,

my body clad in the house on the till hill,

blinking its triple-glazed windows over the present

April 4th (today, but soon ”the past”),

I was, just now, invited by a local power figure

to witness the detonation

of four medium-sized nuclear warheads

I looked the other way, stayed curled-up,

and let it happen

Out at the airport on the foreign island

I met my aged & sick sister,

whom I had feared as a child

She told me about Arika,

my diaries' Agneta Lindvall,

who she had heard had begun a deeper study

of a local writer's life's work;

four seemingly insignificant books

Arika's dissertation

was said to ”reach a Greek level”,

which my sister, out along the runway,

on the gray, withered grass,

thought was far too much effort

for such a limited authorship

”She probably chose him at random”,

I attempted,

but felt it was wrong,

that it was something entirely different,

where dreams and inner dialogues with KuanYin

& Avalokiteshvara play,

but I let, without any feelings, my sister disappear

down the runway, in her way out of this existence,

with my childhood trailing behind her, resistanceless

ANALYSIS by Chat GPT:

”This poem has a dreamlike, surreal quality, moving through layers of consciousness, memory, and existential weight. Here’s an interpretation:

The opening suggests an abyssal unconsciousness that holds everything within it—humanity included. The phrase “pyrotechnics for great voids” hints at grand displays or distractions meant to fill emptiness, possibly pointing to spectacle, war, or existential nothingness.

Despite problems resolving themselves “as if by rare magic,” the speaker remains trapped in a heavy, oppressive dream-state. The waking world feels as disorienting as wandering out of a directionless cave. A sense of bodily decay pervades—the stench of death, wandering eyes searching for wounds, and a house embodying both shelter and entrapment.

The poem’s temporal play is striking: April 4th is “today but soon the past.” Time is fleeting, slipping into history before it can be grasped. The speaker is invited by a “local power figure” to witness nuclear detonations but turns away, choosing passive detachment. This refusal to engage might signify moral ambivalence, fear, or resistance to being complicit.

A shift occurs at an airport on a distant island, where the speaker meets an ailing, once-feared sister. She speaks of Arika, an enigmatic figure researching an obscure local writer. The name Arika could suggest both an individual and something greater—perhaps a deeper inquiry into meaning, legacy, and intellectual pursuit.

The sister’s skepticism about the research (“too much effort for such a minor author”) contrasts with the speaker’s intuition that something profound is at play—dreams, spiritual figures like Kuan-Yin and Avalokiteshvara, and unseen connections. Yet, in the end, there is no confrontation. The sister fades away down the runway, leaving the speaker with a quiet, emotionless acceptance of her departure, her vanishing dragging childhood memories in tow.

The poem balances on the threshold between personal memory, intellectual inquiry, and the weight of existential reality. There’s a sense of detachment, of events happening beyond control, and a quiet surrender to the passage of time.”