On the nature of Poetry

Poetry is powerful.

It is a spell that has the power to bring a civilization to its knees. It is in the preamble of the constitution to your country. It is found in wedding vows. It is found in eulogies. It is the language of religion. It is embedded in the chant of every priest. Every major religious text is quite literally ancient poetry.

It is a love letter to humanity — one that captures the monstrous magnificence of being human. It is heroic in the sense that it defeats the constraint of time. It lives in the musings of a beautiful mind. It is a memento that carries the legacy of our existence.

It is a catalyst for empathy. Empathy for you, for me, for us. Poetry is powerful because it can milk compassion that could heal even the most gruesome of demons. It is a reflective tool to understand the human condition. It dares us to stick our toes into the eeriness of our deepest sorrows. It crystallizes that which is ephemeral. It outlives us. It will outlive you.

Poetry is a state of being and a being in of itself. It feels us, just as we feel it. It is an amorphous entity that rides the cusp of death— immortalizing anything that stands in its way. It is not fixed. It is mutable, taking on the essence of the soul that finds it. It is a beautifully vile creature, constantly dreading you with the truth of eternal transience.

It is a nomad, mind-hopping across space and time, desperate to plant its roots into the barren soils of oblivion. Adept in the art of camaflouge, it comes up with ingenious ways to hide in plain sight. It is sneaky, residing between the lines of our most guarded secrets. It is a divine trickster at play. It hides, we seek. We hide, it seeks.

It is a mirage. The cryptic māyā. A double vision. An astigmatic curse on language. It exists but it doesn’t really exist. It is an elemental being that preys on the beatific. It is the nebulous cloud that births ecstasy. The clouds morph into it. The stars constellate into it. It is a dream of the dead. The unborn’s foresight on what is to come. A ghost’s distant past. It is that which thinks us into existence.

It starts with a prelude. It ends with a cadence. It will be engraved on your gravestone just as you were baptized by it.