A Transgression

Building on the idea that the metaphor goes beyond space,
Which is a fancy way of saying that language transcends the given,
What still gaudier language clothes the thought that we say more than we mean

(As if the cloth itself had stitched the threads, as if the vest invested
Its composing strands – in an era, a place, in short, in a face)

I find in all literature this fascination with the empirical, with describing it --
Its complexes and folds, its vapidness, humidity, its color and tone,
And weight, its heat or temperance, its perspicuity, its chance, its fate --

But these elaborate elaborations, heaping upon the bare minimals of sense
The dressing of delight in pretty words, and in so doing substituting thought
For what it thinks, never seem to touch, caressing only air,
The substance of the things at which they grasp.

It is not that language won't suffice – but its purpose
Is misconstrued: it is not the vessel that leaks
Nor a capacity, and perhaps it is right to say it is a kind of light
Illuminating beings – but what we turn towards, what we constantly think
Are these themselves, in all their pleated intricates,
In all their various and unitary holdings which the mind
Can never hold.

Things are complicated, the discovery
Of identity in difference is the word –
But the word which, always simple,
Merely points to what is not.

Language is not a game, but it is never a theory either:

I imagine the ideal of thought transfigured and invested,
I imagine the ideal of thought taking shape in all these shapes.