As this is still in copyright, I am figuratively glancing about surreptitiously and wondering if I’m allowed to post this – but I can’t resist.
Where Laughter Came From
Laughter was the shape the darkness took around the first appearance of the light. That was its name then: The Shape The Darkness Took Around The First Appearance Of The Light.
The light still keeps trying to touch its lips. The lips of darkness.
The light’s hand rises but the darkness is not there. Only laughter.
– W. S. Merwin
From his 2007 collection of prose poems, The Book of Fables.
I like it when poems are resistant to easy interpretation in a playful, secretive, mythological way, rather than being abstruse or strenuously allusive. (Although the latter kind are fun in their own way, especially when generously footnoted for the uninitiated.) I’m having a lot of fun putting my brain into origami pleats trying to grasp all of this one at once.