The Dark Descent

Vincent Van Gogh

Self Portrait in Dark Felt Hat

The Dark Descent

The mind is like a mirror, a miracle whose light
Can drown within the image that blackens out my sight
Or stops beyond the eardrum to beat its murder in
Or drives along the fingers taking the tactual to
The terror that determines what we are and do.
Wherever the nostril nudges or mists upon the bright
Surface above the handle that held us once upright,
The taste and all our torture, the touch that brings us through
The single thought distorts us and blurs
Our will and good,
O let it all be equal
To what I might have been
Before the mind accepted the dark descent within.

~ Norman Macleod ~