Philosophical Fragments

1.

I hope for a clearing, where light can come down from the trees
And bathe me in the crystal shade of air, yes bathe me,
Cleaning again the wounds of thought,
The misunderstanding that is my blood,
Replacing it with music, beautiful music --
But that to which is listened and never remembered as heard.

2.

What you are afraid of is that it will end,
That the final explanation will be inscribed with white chalk on the black-board
And you will sit, a passive witness to the revelation,
As if nature or the hand of God were finally to gesture at what you are,
Or guide you to a gesture of your own.

And what then?

When you understand everything,
Because there was nothing to understand,
Because confusion has dissolved,
What will there be except food, sex, and sleep?

3.

Look, it is all around you: it is thinking!
But when I think I travel a dusty road --
I am not thinking at all,
Even when I am thinking most,
Because I cannot walk on the ground of my own thoughts.

Hard demands: to come into the world knowing everything,
And who would you speak to or what would you have to say?

My saying is such a small portion of all the saying,
And I abandon it continually,
And when I flow back,
I dissolve whatever I had done.

Thinking is awash in itself.
Or thinking is the reef on its own edges:
But the reef is dead, and lives
By the continual influx of what destroys.