In Which I Make Peace with the World

I am where the present moment has brought me
And it hasn't brought me anywhere.

I am not nowhere, but this will not last.
The present cannot keep itself --
The moment won't endure.

I, too, will not endure, unless the thinking mind
Which grasps the truth, clings fast to that eternal thing.

But sense will perish. Sense will perish -- still
It has some meaning. But the meaning of sense
Is the present upon which it stands

No firm foundation, that, but enough of substance
To feel and breathe and think and move.

Down

How is the road down? It isn't hot
At first, though I admit the air
Feels moist, but there's a soggy
Cool like moss, which grows
To luxury of slime, and only later climbs
Into its magma malt.

The way it looks: the hollows of eyes
Watch the entrance, and the distance
Is a bird's reply. Tears of water
Course the rocks, somewhere wind
Will try to talk. Soon the sun
Blinks, then the floor drops.

Entreaty

--- "Because skin is soft, and a comfort
As the sheets are drawn up
When the mattress warms
From the heat of two bodies, and the cool
Blows in from the window like a kiss,
Like eyelashes brushing the hands.

Because skin is hot, it suffers and surrounds, it opens
And embraces, and it rubs. My love,"
Eyes dart among the gaps that call, the halls
That spread out, though, unlike the darkness, do not touch
The murmur of the stars. -- "She is gone, she does not hear
Or see, she does not feel, never will a heart
Stammer at the impulse of her eyes, lips will not
Describe what they remember, hands
Will not grab hands, teeth
Cannot graze tongue." (She's come undone.)

Philolaus

In the center stands
The fortress, Zeus'
Oven, guarding
Ether's seed, the pupil
Of the burning globe,
The penetration of its light.

Around revolves
The starry circle, sphere
Of fixed illuminations,
Through which medium
Refracting light ignites
The sun, our moon.

Below the moon, the planets lurch
Through cycling births,
The variations of the earth
In its distinction from the sun
Effect the dawn and bring the day
Upon the hidden truth of stars.

The Antichthon has never known its twin,
And apart from the eclipse's sign,
Remains obscure. Beyond some way
Of tripling triples, darkness, until opposites
Define an edge; lapse
Relapses to return, and emptiness
Extinguishes the burn.

Being and Opinion

We begin with the approach to everything
That is of which its consciousness
Will be a part so that you could call
The approach an advance
Towards itself. "Such an ingress
Will never be a progress." Admittedly,
It does have some solidity: regard's
Primitive would be inertia. "No
Regard but a glance
And a reflection. The principle
Is like a mirror." So
This refraction tesselates itself
Into a fractal that can never hold
Its own infinity (refraction
Is an element of light, which always
Differs from itself regarding things, thus these
Waves are very like opinion and the world
It opines).

Love

A beautiful, smooth and narrow
Slits, the gleam, the sound --
Like calx -- like a reed incanted
By the season. It
Is not a substance!
The word must be a he or you. Will
We come close when two
Materials meet? Give us
One idea. Well,
a word between us
And a tongue. Is it
All then that germinates, is it
Bees when they pluck
The flower's progeny? Mirrors
Maybe, you will find
An image in a soul.
But if I must have a truth
Then I will be alone, whereas
Even understanding is
The bond of those
Who grasp and pull
Themselves to themselves
And wind around
Their bodies in their emptiness
The things they know.

Analysis

The clouds will clear, unfolding the sky
Circumspect, the sun
Will blow the islands, show
Its force to the purging air,
All birds become aloft
In their swart guile. Anthers buzz
Meanwhile and every supple
Sap. Here too is deluge
Of draught, light comes
Thick in its dance because sex is only
Species of collision. Bodies therefore
Must be warm
And clear, and what is bright
Must be the lust of eyes; this luster
Is a symbol -- what it means
Is sheen.

Reflux

It bubbles up in the throat,
Burning the tender; it scars
And sears the tissue
Which swells and tears; relay
Relates the change; the brain
Alerts itself through pains;
The pains distract
The mind and rend it
From immortal things,
And so the sense,
Sensing what is subject
To decay, itself decays: day
Darkens into time, and time
Brings its predictables until
The body dulls into a body
And its purpose lurches
Into law. There must be
Someone who reckons on the end
Of reckoning, and can find
A reason in unreasonable
Regress, in the bud
That freezes, in the blood
That ceases
Circulation, and in failure --
In temptation.

One Pastoral

Hills by fleece and grass, dirty
Mud mixes everything
Which melts, though no original
Since it is cold. Walls
Won't fortify with reed and fire
If it cooks can never warm, though
There are stars -- and that is puzzling,
Too. The sounds especially grow dim
Among what little grass,
And never in the spectacle surprise unless
The eyes forget. Still, there is wheat;
Still, there is meat. Still words
Are sometimes heard -- and that is puzzling,
Too.

Ruin

A deep from out a tower rising in rough hewn
Splices roughed and extraordinary about
The water and the sand
Wedged into obelisks, a significance of which
The monument abides though fallen, if
The leeway of a general
Collapse and tufts of rye
Amid the grass allow nothing
To emerge besides the calm
Conspiracy, whistling and weltering while glides
Surpass the frictionless above.

"Sight was a medium for beings seen..."

What falls away is the appearances,
Images in the half-light behind
Of which you cannot look, and especially
The black which is cool, flows
Like a slant. Their conjunction is a separate need
That never comes back, of none, for none:
Sight was a medium for beings seen.
Then it should have been firm. There should have been
Fire on the other side, maybe.

Theogony

Creatura: we were put here to create. The word
Is the creation of creations -- both the hollows of its sound
And the meaning that fills them
And fulfills them. It is responsible
Both for and to the world in which
It is made and which it makes --
This is its double harmony
In sound and sense. The best words
Therefore are a worship whereby offerings
Are once more offered up,
Where what was gift is given
Back: the giving mirrors the gift,
Which is itself a mirror to mirror
The mirror of what is mirrored
(And thus the sound gives way to sight,
And what was earth falls into flight).

There are absolute boundaries of law,
Markers set in stones
That freedom cannot fail:
These are liberty's dictates, these
Are the bills of transgression.

Der Verstand

When will it be possible to see
A little bit of light on glass
And know the glass? -- to live
Among objects in their inertia
As a friend and when they move?

I trace my meaning to the compass of a form.

"There will at least be sounds..."
And truly -- but of them too I ask
A kind of music:
The one I can perform.

Alzaprazolam

The water cuts the land in two;
If the sky will betoken itself
When one half of the earth rests on its gloom,
He who would walk to the cleft and stretch his palms
For the rite, since he would not know what to do
With the light, much less pity, for the sake of the act
Recluding all salvation, would breathe
A salutation -- whether to stain the moon
Or push himself on stars --

His own ear heard it only
And could exalt the sound.

Theognis vv. 53-68

Kurnos, while this city remains the same city, still do the people
Differ, who earlier neither custom understood nor law, but out
-Wore goatskins on their ribs and past this city grazed
Like deer. But, son of Polus, now they're good -- though those
Noble before are actually wretched. Who that sees these things
Can bear them up? ... They're laughing at each other as the other
Each deceives, knowing not the marks of good nor ill.
Of these make none your friend, I mean, Polus' son, the citizens,
No matter what your spirit's need. Seem rather kindred
To all in tongue, though you mix with none
In every zealous deed. For you will know the hearts
Of wretches, of trust how there upon their works is none;
nay, cunning deceits and tangled have they loved
Thus as no man ever of salvation's hope.

Panacea

He would have tired, he would have laid
Himself down and lying
On his pain invented lies
To stop his throat when that ice
Flows past the stopper and
Unstopped, drips
Across the lips to touch the tongue,
Which dances on the teeth and sings
That heaven's will is done.

Mine is winter's mind, and winds
Breathe over me. I watch the rock
Disfigure in the snow.
The figures of the sky
When the light air moves
The sun
To their imperfect pitch
Transfix me; then I know
The earth's still brood -- but a rustle
Quickens and a hare
Leaps from the drift,
Shaking loose the limbs of trees
And digging up
Old leaves.

Tantalos

It is a dark place, and they have not felt the heat of the fire
Who dwell in that waste, where the rain never ceases
To drip and the only light is the lightning's blue. Follow,
Heart, since you request from me the fate of a man
Who did not begrudge the gods his only son:
He honored them with a sumptuous banquet,
Tender flesh, and even Demeter
Was pleased. But his well-beloved daughter
Would not be surpassed: to Leto she offered
Her labor's last fruits.

McTaggart #2

First learn the nature
Not of things in time,
But time itself, in which partaking,
If indeed they do partake,
Those things that creep will creep
And all that rotates turns,
By which the spheres
Fall towards each other and again
Are forced away,
Since every motion is a change,
And each change asks of time
Its possibility, so if eternal time
Remains unborn then nothing moves.

An old man casts a net
Into the sterile sea
In expectation of bright livelihood. Watch:
Hand over hand he tugs the hemp,
Then lifts it overhead and casts. So time is pulled
From what will be into the present
Moment, then goes slack
And sinks into the past -- we say this is the first
Of twin series, call it A: each moment
If any moment ever was
Is now or will be or has been.

In the east the rosy sun
Arises, scattering the night,
And courses on towards noon, descends
From sight. Along this latitude
Each longitude is marked
From east to west: to its neighbor's left
Or on the right each point must rest.
Thus the second series we call B
Gives time's chronology, for each event
Must follow on the last,
Regardless if it's future, present now,
Or past.