Oftentimes while on a midnight stroll the scenery of night plays out like a lonely piano in a moonlit ballroom as each heavy note gently tears away at the heart -- surely shredding it in halves.
A scene: viewed over and over through the mind's memory
the questioning begins and so it is said: : "It isn't supposed to be this way"
As often as it is, passion overcomes the logic of reason and the inquisitive battle of the mind is held upon a grayed field of interchanging, intermixing, light and darkness.
What solemn sanctuary awaits those who fall into darkness visible --
What grudgingly painful step up the mountain will be made less by that of grace?
Your chaotic asylum holds refuge for the nobler mind --
for at the lowest of our despair lies the capacity for ascension more glorious.
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This is perhaps one of my more complex poems so I wanted to attempt to explain some of it to my readers.
The title is a multiple play on phrases and such. Of course, there is the phrase "Peace of Mind", well that is definitely what I want to achieve with this poem. However, it is also a single thought I had, and thus, it becomes a "piece" of my mind that I wanted to share. The other half of the title is an homage to John Milton's poem Il Penseroso. (usually accompanied with the poem L'Allegro)His poem is about engaging in a type of melancholy but in the sense of scholarly contemplation. by adding to it, I hint that there is a type of "solving" going on in this process of "penseroso."
The first stanza is an opening in which I introduce the setting and attempt to produce an atmosphere of melancholy. These are the moments when we stop and reflect on things in life, and sometimes they aren't kind to the heart.
The second stanza, is playing off this type of inward reflection in which we usually doubt ourselves and such.
The third stanza is exactly in the middle of the poem separating the first two opening stanzas and the last pair of concluding stanzas. This is done intentionally because it is about the balance of life, such a theme is imbued within the imagery of light and darkness in a constant battlefield of grays. The "grays" indicate the complex nature of everything in which, most of the time it is neither black or white. In addition, this stanza makes not of the passion overtaking logic. This happens way too often during moments of melancholy, in which sometimes, logically, there are MANY reasons why this person shouldn't be depressed, however due to passion taking the lead, it becomes a moment of almost despair.
The last two stanzas to me are the most important of the poem because they come up with a type of resolution or acknowledgment to be made out of dire situations of the heart and mind.
"darkness visible" is another allusion to Milton. It is a funny juxtaposition of words in which darkness is SO dark that you can actually see it. In this case, I liken it to despair. So I question what kind of solomn sanctuary can you get from such darkness? Similarly, in the same stanza, I liken life as to climbing up a mountain, and with each painful step the hike becomes harder, once again I question how less can the pain be taken away by grace? essentially, grace becoming the kindness and help of others.
The answer lies within the last stanza in which a justification for a nobler mind comes out of a "chaotic asylum." In the sense that once we feel that we have hit the bottom, the place with most room is to go upwards. For at the lowest of our despair lies the capacity for ascension more glorious.
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