A unitive vision

This poem is a collage of phrases taken from artists and writers (so that the poem's form mirrors its content) exploring the artist's task in terms of the linking of fragments to form a unitive vision:

A collection of bits, series of fragments,
fragmented bits, chance scraps really,
records of things, vestiges of sorts and kinds of disciplinae,
different views, experiences, beliefs and prayers,
mental associations, liaisons, meanderings to and fro,
ambivalences, asides,
sprawl of the pattern, if pattern there is.

This is the way in which the mind does work:
consisting of connections, eliminations, selections:
such processes being reflected in, and by, the world.
The bits don’t fit together very well –
sometimes they even seem to be contradictory -
stories, poems, teachings, records, events and miracles
rub up against each other; contradictions I'm able to live with.
The only way is, instead of running from contradictions,
to run into them, wrap my arms around them and give them a big kiss.

So, like a disciplined scholar, I piece fragments together,
past conjecture, establishing true sequences of pain.
Trying hard to make this whole thing blend
these fragments I have shored against my ruins.
Though torn in two we can be one;
beyond the cacophony there can be higher connections
the attempt at language capable of embracing
seeming opposites from a higher point of view.

In contact with a network of propositions,
images, processes, natural pathology and what-have-you
that is like some vast ecology or aesthetics of cosmic interaction:
not only within the mind, but in connection with the world outside
of which the mind is conscious:
some circuitry going between, and around,
these inside and outside worlds
through the gathering, the linking, the seeing,
the shaping of different experiences into sequences.

This is the sort of occurrence that artists seem to describe –
the way that out of activities of randomness
there are formed structures as of a mind and by a mind: that such is life.
We build up constantly changing models of the world
from seemingly random thoughts and images.
Artists seem able, with practice, to build this information
into structures with meaning; they make things fit together.

Held together, they form a colourful and intriguing picture
that draws us into its own landscape
achieving a unity through the yoking of motifs
taken from different realms of given reality;
perhaps making a kind of coat of many colours,
such as belonged to 'that dreamer' in the Hebrew myth.
A central direction and a rich diversity
glimpsing something of the divine being and his life in the world;
a collage of God.

All things are held together by correspondence,
image with image, movement with movement.
Without that there could be no relation and therefore no truth.
It is our business - yours and mine - to take up the power of relation,
to develop a language or style
being elusive, allusive, not didactic
by which apparent contradictions might be held.
So ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in!

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Leonard Cohen - Anthem.