Palimpsestic Circle Poem by Denis Mair

- - on an artwork by Chaled Res

There is still much wildness deep within...
now it is forming a net that bewilders linear reason,
where chaotic nodes and fluid arcs coexist,
on top of which decisive strokes are conceived
to harvest the chaos and put it into words.
Over time the strokes are finding a new purpose,
reshaped and pulled into a grid-like structure,
but the grid cannot be mechanically drawn;
it is still living at the tip of a fluid pen,
it has to be built up by following regular paths,
to sum up the underlying turns and twists.
Now the tangled arcs can no longer be fully wild;
the strokes do not declare themselves nakedly;
the words are transient formations to be read
on the palimpsest of a shifting grid;
nothing is privileged to declare itself.
The imperative of wovenness completes this circle;
even so, such a circle cannot be only one way.
It has other iterations that haunt our perception;
there is an afterimage of deep light shining through,
and there is a circle of gold light that ripens fruits,
and a circle of wide-open, blue-sky possibilities.
At another level of seeing, all are superimposed;
this stark palimpsestic circle is also a kind of shining...