Labels Poem by Harry St Vincent Beechey

I tied a label on it

Robbing it forever of its Godhood

Rendering it invisible beneath the layer of semantic paint

Guaranteed indelible.

Midas-like

I am accursed

And every wondrous Suchness touched by my thought

Becomes a noun

Forever lost to me beneath its name.

The purity I glimpsed is now obscured

By the golden skin of language.

Oh to look!

Just to look with silent mind

In wonder at its being

But no,

The word springs all unbidden to my lips

And I have NAMED it once again

And tied a label on it

As I have been labelled

Myself.



H.St.V.Beechey 1972