The dying of the light

What are we to make of twilight, those final searing moments when the sun sinks and dies and brings our own mortality sharply into focus? We can party like shamen, or view the setting sun as an ecological metaphor; the smouldering embers of a tired and angry giver of life. We should count our blessings, our lives pass in the blink of an eye in the scale of all creation. We take for granted the rise, phoenix like, of a rejuvenated sun come the morning. But inevitably there will come a day when all our sunsets are done. I can't help but think we should rage and rave on towards that day, never loosing sight of our responsibility to carve out a little happiness in a daunting world.

I wrote this poem about being true to oneself three years ago. I have lived with the pain of lies ever since. Truly for something wonderful to happen we should absolve ourselves of the shackles of self-deceit, and welcome the new sun and new loves with an honesty that allows one to anticipate the dying of the sun with a clean conscience and content soul. Occasionally in life someone comes along that reminds you of this fact.


Liar

Shall I compare thee, liar, to a corpse?
Compared to that brittle and lifeless husk, thou art sick.
And ye knows it.
Black is the colour of thine alignment:
The dark brooding clouds that hath enslaved thy mind's summer seasons,
Holds thy soul captive more securely than any prison bar.
Lies are to blame;
Denying the truth has driven thee insane.
Does thy know, even, what the truth is?
Thy lives thy life at a perennial sunset.
I have oft thought this to be the most difficult time in any man's life:
To accept that thy's day is finally concluded.
But fool, for you, another can still yet begin;
Whilst thou let it?
Whilst thou accept the wonder of creation,
In all its blaze, and all its glory?
As the new sun labours to free itself of its saline warder,
A countless myriad of stars shimmer on the crescents of the ocean's fabric;
Far more plentiful and far brighter than any night sky.
Echoes of the heavens on Gaia's seas.
Reflections indeed.
This is life, and it can be yours,
But never again for that rancid corpse.
So liar, does thy see the truth?
Will thee look eastwards and dance naked on the sands?
The future is the only one true purity, so take it by the hand;
But have a care not to violate it,
For time will come when thy's tomorrow's are exhausted.
Or ye can go now, and head westwards again,
And covert the corpse's vile and dark den.


And from another Welshmen far more eloquent than I:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

~ Dylan Thomas