Skip to content

Scottish Poetry Library

Register/Sign in
Shopping Bag Shopping Bag
Bringing people and poems together
  • Home
  • COVID-19
    • Re-Opening FAQ
  • Poetry
    • Poems
    • Poets
    • Our National Poet
    • Podcasts
    • Best Scottish Poems
    • Poetry and Mindfulness
    • Champions 2020
    • Posters
    • Publishers
  • Library
    • Become a borrower
    • Catalogue
    • Collections
    • Ask a librarian
    • Copyright enquiries
  • Learning
    • National Poetry Day 2019
    • National Poetry Day archive
    • SQA set texts
    • Learning resources
    • New to poetry?
    • Advice for poets
  • Events
    • Calendar
    • Exhibitions
    • Venue hire
    • List an event
  • Shop
    • National Poetry Day 2020
    • New Titles
    • Poetry Pamphlet Cards
    • Pocket Poets
    • Scottish Poetry
    • Help
  • About us
    • Our story
    • Our people
    • Our projects
    • Jobs
    • Our building
    • FAQs
    • Find us
  • Support us
    • Become a Friend
    • Donate
    • Easy Fundraising
  • Blog
Shopping BagShopping Bag
Ask a librarian
  • Home
  • >
  • Poetry
  • >
  • John Burnside
  • >
  • An Essay Concerning Light
Donate Donate icon Ask a Librarian Ask a Librarian icon

An Essay Concerning Light

John Burnside

O nobly-born, listen. Now thou art experiencing the Radiance of the Clear Light of Pure Reality.
Recognize it. O nobly-born, thy present intellect, in real nature void, not formed into anything as
regards characteristics or colour, naturally void, is the very Reality, the All-Good.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead (tr. W. Y. Evans-Wentz)

I Scotlandwell

All summer long, I waited for the night
to drive out in the unexpected gold
of beech woods, and those lighted homesteads, set
like kindling in the crease-lines of the dark,

catching a glimpse, from the road, of huddled dogs
and sleepless cattle, mustered in a yard
as one flesh, heads
like lanterns, swaying, full of muddled light;

light from the houses television blue,
a constant flicker, like the run of thought
that keeps us from ourselves, although it seems
to kindle us, and make us plausible,

creatures of habit, ready to click
into motion. All summer long,
I knew it had something to do
with looking again, how something behind the light

had gone unnoticed; how the bloom on things
is always visible, a muddled patina
of age and colour, twinned with light or shade
and hiding the source of itself, in its drowned familiar.


John Burnside

from The Hunt in the Forest (Jonathan Cape, 2009)

Reproduced by permission of the publisher.

Tags:

21st century poems Best Scottish Poems 2009 light scottish poems the subliminal

About this poem

This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2009. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor in 2009 was Andrew Greig.

Editor’ s comment:
John Burnside’s previous collection Gift Songs was my bedside book for months; this one will be. Patient, untricksy, calmly lifting the curtain around the unsayable. His concern seems always with Presence, the glimpsed-at along the margins of the visible. For myself, I identify with these Rilkean concerns with the numinous, the ever-present, which animate a number of the poems and poets here.

Author’ s note:
The initial prompt for ‘An Essay Concerning Light’ was a passage from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, in which the dying person is advised to go into the light – a phrase that has become a cliché, of course, in our lexicon of received ideas, after fifty or so years in which Buddhist ideas have become part of the cultural wallpaper. I’m not a Buddhist, but the idea of going into the light, both in its original form and in the many ways our culture has adopted/adapted it, has intrigued me for years, as have notions of what happens at the point of death in other cultures. Alongside this fascination, I am also obsessed with the play of dark and light, not surprising in a creature of the north, and this poem was, as its title suggests, intended as an ‘essay’ on the nature of light.

Share this
Facebook
Twitter
Email

Learn more

Best Scottish Poems 2009

edited by Andrew Greig
Find out more

John Burnsideb.1955

John Burnside is a poet and novelist whose work explores fundamental spiritual and ecological issues about the nature of our dwelling on earth.   
More about John Burnside

Podcasts

Our audio programme of poets, poems and news for you to listen to.
Listen Now
  • Newsletter signup
  • Accessibility
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
Scottish Poetry Library
5 Crichton's Close, Canongate
Edinburgh EH8 8DT
Tel: +44 (0)131 557 2876
© Scottish Poetry Library 2021.
The Scottish Poetry Library is a registered charity (No. SCO23311).
City of Edinburgh logo Green Arts Initiative logo Creative Scotland logo
By leaves we live

The Scottish Poetry Library is staffed weekdays from 10am – 2pm and is providing a limited service including postal loans and Click & Collect. For details, click COVID-19 in the menu bar above. Dismiss