Poem of the Day: "Cave Painter" by James Frederick William Rowe, Frequent Contributor and Poet of the Week

Songs of Eretz Poetry Review is pleased to present “Cave Painter” by James Frederick William Rowe, Frequent Contributor and this week’s Poet of the Week.  "Cave Painter" is the second in Rowe's "Caveman Trilogy."  The first poem appeared in the Review yesterday, and the third poem will appear in the Review tomorrow. A biography of the poet may be found in our “About Our Editor & Frequent Contributors” section.

Cave Painter

James Frederick William Rowe

In the perennial cold

Of a glacial night

The only warmth to be found

Is in the flicker of the fire

And light, these are no stars

In these caves, just fire

Which casts strange shadows upon the walls

The images of their sleeping dreams

And my waking ones

For my mind is alive as they slumber

With forms of beasts and fowls

Things true and false

And man, witness of all things

Thinker, dreamer of all things

So I dip my finger in dead embers

To mark my dreams, to trace my shadows

And so I paint, first with ash

Then with dye which stains my outlines

Gives life to images once so dead

Now in motion, caught in the act

And I their trapper

Or am I the one trapped?

Lost to the visions which compel my hand

They will think me mad

And they will think me holy

They have not erred in either case

I am possessed of mighty thoughts

Of dreams which must be seen

And kept, and preserved!

For all ages, for all time!

My dreams must not be lost to waking

They must not fade with the years

And so I, the painter

Have now become a priest

Of the magic of these forms

The enchantment of these lines

And for a thousand generations

This world of ice and sky

Of man and beast and wind-swept fields

Shall not fade away, shall not be lost

And I shall be known in these images

Preserved after the same fashion

The painter who marked the wall

Who stole life from time

Poet’s Notes:  This poem is part two of my "Caveman Trilogy" and takes as its inspiration the abundance of cave paintings found scattered across primeval human settlement.  I have turned the original cave painter into a sort of priestly-ecstatic figure, who at night begins to paint the images of his "waking dreams" upon the walls as the rest of the cave sleeps. He is "possessed" by the inspiration—the spirits of the fire and shadow working upon him—that the world he knows—perhaps recognizing, presciently, that one day man will not live as he did—should be "preserved for all ages, for all time". It is notable that he characterizes his thoughts as both "true and false", indicating that these are as much fantasies as depiction of reality, indicative of the mystical character of the whole procedure.

I begin each stanza (excluding the first) with "and". This gives a sense of enjambment that I thought suited the ecstatic character of the painter. As the poem progresses, the setting transitions to a focus on the painting, and then to the painter's mission, ending with the recognition that the painter is marking his own existence as much as those of the images. Though the cave painter is anonymous both in reality and in the poem, he is nevertheless remembered by the work he left behind. He has "stole(n) life from time".

The ending of the poem required some attention after I had a degree of difficulty completing it after the initial spark of inspiration ceased working on me. So it was that my subway poem was completed at home, after some deliberation and thought. Nevertheless, it wasn't a difficult poem to write, and came rather naturally.