Narcissus In The Underworld #7

--Bruce Bond

       

Last night a ghost came to me and said,

a little terror haunts everything we do.

I do not think the voice talked to me

alone. Take any tower when it falls.

A refuse blooms, then it settles, fades.

Wounds harden. The urge to scratch becomes

its own problem, until that problem settles,

hardens. Time heals, we say. We say it again.

The children at their computers in class

look down, where the towers fall and fall.

They enter the cloud, the way light enters

the eye. It drags a bit of cloud-dust in,

no sooner felt than blinked into extinction.

The dead cannot hear you. Whatever they say.

The myth of Narcissus is particularly compelling since it explores not only some of the tragic implications of ego weakness and its compensatory expression in ego inflation, but also the possibility of self-transformation. What some may miss about the myth  of Narcissus is the surprising outcome--that is, his reemergence in the form of the narcissus flower. This flower presents one possible emblem for imaginative work in all its initial narcissistic allure and its eventual immersion in something beyond the self. Similarly imaginative and amorous life transports one inward and outward at the same moment. The way out of the self is through it.    --Bruce Bond