Poem: “Light”, by Ioanna Moutsopoulou

From the Poetry Collection 
“Souls Of Nature”

Narrator: Ian Robertson

Light! An essence from the most ancient fire,
at the outset of the world
lost back in time,
then when the immaterial Spirit
shot with light the primeval darkness
in an explosive moment of will
emitting itself, the inexhaustible,
in an unfathomable sacrifice
on the outlines of form.
The imprisoned darkness breathed. 

It was a suppliant at the portal of God,
worn out by the loss of sight
with the condemnation of a boundless time.
It was carried with the quivering traces of life
without motion, because it was darkness
and movement was impossible in its non-existence,
on the edges of the free country –
that of God.
———————–
Spirit and matter,
the insoluble enigma
and yet within us so familiar.
And there was a light, great and limitless, 
and the prison was lit up in an instance.
And then dark thoughts
terrified showed themselves,
wilful dark amid involuntary darkness.
Hosts of armies of darkness did battle with the light.
But that was elusive,
an undefiled beauty which those envied,
but it had already entered into them
and the battle was lost from the start,
in the face of the Boundless, in the face of the Eternal Now.
It is only in time that the war still rages,
but time is no more than a simple thought of God
and unfolds the drama before our eyes
in the shadows which the light has made.
A drama with lines and colours,
in fiery senses of the world
exploring its aim perpetually,
until all things look like light.
Mind and emotions.
Who said that the world is empty?
The self ceaselessly unfolds itself
in the fields of life
and the consciousness like another light advances
there where the sunlight does not enter in.
———————–
Light! A magical essence, full of spirit,
as much as this world could endure.
Life in the fields of nature, ecstatic,
on the green carpet of the earth,
in the beauty which is revealed triumphantly
in the eyes of the beings whose joy is light.
Boundless gradations of light
tell stories of nature and of man with images,
and all seems so natural,
because the beginning has been forgotten,
then when the unintentional darkness, fainting,
lay in the fields of vanity
without that spark, the abundant spark, of life
which mercilessly tenses existence
in the games of time,
in order to find its self.
———————–
The old oak-tree in the yard
beneath the summer’s sun
stands like an unassailable rock,
unsleeping guardian of the house,
under the weight of so many summer memories
of a joyful warmth of life
protected in its shade.
And the birds and the flowers further off.
They live only in the generous light
and their graces bring beauty,
undefiled by chaos,
by that willed darkness
which has hidden in the primordial blindness
so that death does not find it.
Beings of light have supported our life,
but we, uncaring, have forgotten them.
We are beings of light too,
the light did not enter only into our branches,
but passed into the crypts
of the heart and the brain
and the Book of Life opened
before our eyes
and the course for our soul
was illumined too,
so that the battle should not be in the dark
in a hopeless effort of life,
with irresponsibility incapable of giving us solace
when the darkness of the heart deludes us
with the poor gifts of an imprisoned soul,
while all around us the light burgeons triumphantly,
in nature and in the inner self.