Empty Cave (Revision 3)

[Brownlie]

It is not the dark,
the slick wet,
the cold chain,
the pictures
on the wall.

It is not the game,
face-fixed, calling out:
horse, pig, soldier--in flickers
like a fever 

dream. It is not 
the echo,
the lisp from the fire,
but life that passes
from behind—a life
of outlines.

It is the scream of the eyes
beyond the mouth.
It is the horse. 
Yes! The horse, then the release

and the return
beneath the dividing line, 
the separation, 
shadows coalescing, 
to know and be fully known.

~~~

Something I did about 3 years ago, but bena's thread made me think of it. I cut a line, adjusted some line breaks, and wanted to see if it worked. I would have posted the earlier thread but trying to do the update there messed up the fonts of the poem and added a ton of spaces between the stanza breaks rather than mess with it I reposted.

First of all, Plato probably wouldn't like this. Fever dream seems good if that is a change. Overall, this is quite compelling. There is a parallelism with what it isn't then what it is and the whole thing is thought provoking. When I think of empty, the following ideas come to mind: Darkness, negative meaning stripped of its opposing force, chaos, and much more (which is probably a stones throw away on Wikipedia). I think there may be some good description of a blinding sun somewhere in Plato.