Radiance (For Naseer Ahmed Nasir) Poem by Stephen Bennett The Playjurist

I use this word too, just a word is all it is, but all it is,
I think, I mean really not this word... I mean any word,
including this, is a lot more than any heavenly thing...
any might-be place for all the good dead people to be
or for the stars, planets and galaxies. A word is
less and can be lesser all the way down to nothing.
At the same time more than every single individual
sovereign whatever it now is doing, or can ever mean.
I suspect that in your poem I can feel among its things
the wonders of created phrases or/and first time idea
sketches made for your earlier moments that you wrote
when they were right for that one time thought,
unknown to you, they were made back then
for now... the now of your “dreams lost”, the now,
which was a now that back then, you hadn't got to yet.
That kenning “watch” you juxtaposed to “sleep”
feels to me a wonderfully first time event. But it's about
“radiance” I wish to speak. I love that word.
I use it among some others to build a working
philosophy of everything, generally ignoring
its possible association with the complete death
of everything, as you used it. I forgot. Radiance
is, in my thought, the condition of consciousness,
where one is at one with everything. The next rung
out is possession. When my arm is my arm it is my
possession. But at other times it's me, and me and it
are then radiant. Next beyond would be connection:
a pen and paper my arm and hand can touch.
Then the next I call obvious, everything out there
before my eyes but beyond my reach, and what's
after that is invisible. All of these then coming back
to radiance. So as I write an idea like this, my thinking
mind improvises with my short-term remembered past,
and everything else I know that there is, I am radiant,
at one with the idea that builds in the words infilling
the page. At one time, in one of my orientations, this
very thing you see, held by your two hands maybe
was literally me. Then I find that you write
“What remains Are terra and sol In the dance of death
God is a casualty.” the same language as me,
but from another completely different world.
Oh no, I know it's the same one. I'm inspired to
try harder, but then I wonder who do I think I am.
When I read you sometimes I almost want to give up.