This Side
For Donald Sutherland
There is light. We neither see nor touch it. In its empty clarities rests what we touch and see. I see with my fingertips what my eyes touch: shadows, the world. With shadows I draw worlds, I scatter worlds with shadows. I hear the light beat on the other side.
This Side - meaning Summary
Perceiving Through Touch
The poem explores perception and the paradox of light as both present and inaccessible. The speaker proposes that seeing and touching are mediated acts: fingertips and eyes together apprehend shadows, which become the means for constructing and dispersing worlds. Light is described as remote, its effects felt but not directly grasped, suggesting a boundary between appearance and reality and an awareness of another realm where light itself makes its presence felt.
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