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The following poem, which was accepted for publication in one of the leading literary magazines, was written during the author's analysis.
KAROO2
What ails me now?
What ails this land—bare, barren of all green life? … fretted by hot
winds, hot curling puffs? … and all is still again—hard, granite
rock.
And I?
I wander listlessly from rock to rock,
searching to find one flicker of life within its hidden creases.
But hope dies.
Nothing is found but molten metal—the dung of a thousand sun-strained
mornings.
The sun, sullen in its powerful might, stares brazenly on Earth's blackened
loins
and, staring, stabs relentlessly at dugs it has sucked dry.
My life is stilled at last—scorched.
Wrenched from the burnt-up corpse, the spirit rises in fast gyrations …
mounts into the face of the sullen monster
and strikes, with all life's force, its callous, brutal disc:
in the striking is released in a myriad scattered echoes:
in this last act ascends, descends—everlastingly—
in immortal waves.
The object in presenting the analysis of this poem is to exemplify the extent to which the unconscious mind works in the creation of poetic literature. The style of it is in the modern vogue of 'vers libre'. Rhyming is absent. Rhythm is abundantly present and adapted throughout to the feeling-tone of the subject matter.
The poem was written by the patient during a spell of analysis, while in the lavatory making a constipated stool. He was aware while writing it that the constipation was in some way connected with the poem. Recently analysis had been bringing into consciousness