Parallelismus Ruach

A windy day outside…
A bird flew by.
Far above the grounds of an ivory tower
Where, below, each person waited patiently
For their turn to reinvent the world.
And one person started.

Another gust of wind blew through the trees…
The bird returned to the area.
All it took was pen and paper
To control everything...
And maybe a mirror of sorts.
The faint, warm breeze one day
Suddenly spoke no more
The cold, hard raindrops that day
Refused to fall
The sun wouldn’t shine
The clouds wouldn’t move
Lightning didn’t flash
Thunder didn’t rumble…
Nothing did as it was told.

The wind blew once more…
The bird continued to circle overhead.
It left the group, and the wind followed suit,
And off they went to see what could be seen.

The gusts sailed by the small, rotating observatory,
And the bird watched, for a moment, the building
Moving ‘round and ‘round once more.
Nearby, still standing, the one structure
Where, inscribed in stone, “in omnibus glorifecteur deus,”
To say, “That God may be glorified in all things.”
The same place where, at the top, an old metal cross.

In one room of one building was a most unusual discovery.
It was another place from where the people outside once came.
In that room, dozens and dozens of chemicals strewn about.
Gases and toxins and metals and countless poisons.
Many of them lethal to come even near.
The wind and the bird wondered together
How these people could survive…

That same room didn’t have to be evacuated
Despite many changes and remodels taking place
And even during a messy demolition project
Where a troublesome point known as quartus murus
Had to be removed.
But such things didn’t concern the wind and the bird.

The two found another place, among rocks and trees, the silent grotto
And the zigzagging footpaths leading to it.
The bird saw all this.
The wind found the old stone house.

That small bird and that moving wind…
They had seen people come and people go,
Buildings rise and buildings crumble.
Some things changed while others remained constant.
Order grew from disorder. Chaos yielded to harmony.
The bird flew on; the wind blew another way.

Eventually the bird and the wind had seen it all.
The people were still there, nearby.
The bird flew by the group of people one last time.
The blustery wind breathed a raspy farewell.
And then they were gone…

The people heard the resounding clangs of the carillon bells.
The one man’s turn to restructure creation… it was now over.
Stopped nature was restored to its former self.
Now it was the next person’s turn.
Fittingly, the first word spoken… was “anabiosis.”

On writing "Parallelismus Ruach"

The goal was to write about somewhere at the university, so I wrote about not just multiple places (all over campus) but about different times. The title means “parallel winds” (another phrase I built). The bird and the wind are both relatively static characters (except for saying goodbye in the end) who are basically acting as detached, objective characters observing what is around them.

The poem overall is also partly a reflection on poetry writing as a form of creating. (The poem can be used to create or describe things in any way the poet feels like.)

The group outside refers to our poetry class itself (writing and reading poems), and the room inside refers to our classroom (the chemicals represent the Periodic Table of the Elements on one wall). Quartus murus, a Latin phrase I built, means “fourth wall” (the phrase “breaking the fourth wall”).

The last part of the poem refers more to the passage of time / the evolution of the school over time, and also about one person ending his reading of a poem and moving on to the next person’s turn to read (and create his own reality). Anabiosis means a return to life from death or apparent death, because one “creation” ends when one poem is over, but then the next poem restarts the process.