Couplet

What is the power in things?
Who are the elements' kings?

Arche

I would say, “I want to think.”, and you would begin to tell me about grammar. Because I can say one word and then say another. “And this is called thinking?” “You have to listen very carefully for the space between the sounds.” What, then, am I listening to? But I can’t deny that I hear it.

This dizzying freedom in which one has no commitments:

To think is to form a thought:
Molding dough or shaping clay. But a shape --
I’m looking for a shape that responds
And corresponds

To

The reality? The idea? The expression? The question?

You have to think in pieces
And put them together,

You have to collect them

Gradually, the gradual formation, by degrees,
The steps going forward and backward,
The stumbling, half-waltz

And arrange and re-arrange

As if they half would leap together…

Color

“I think you’re like the sun…”
It would mean illumination,
First, and under it all is the darkness,
Except for my eyes, which exist
Between this absence and its light:
The original of time is black.

“This light which illuminates everything
Is itself invisible.” So I cannot see you.
Wouldn’t it have been better to call you
A reflection of that form in which
All vision of the beautiful partakes?
Its image or its prophecy
To which I am delivered?

But if light emerges from the undistinguished shroud
Then why not say you are the revel of this gloom,
The point that points all things,
Shining species of all spectacle,
The glow which is the world’s gleam?

True

There will be something,
And that’s what’s best -- I would say
This (and point to nothing -- though
There will be something).

Think past the words. Think past
The thought to that in which
The thought inheres. “There will be
Something…” Unsaturate
And all-profound,

The most beautiful thing of all
Is the sound.

He could have had an idea, but it was running away from itself. He would have looked at the sun: in that illumination shines the truth. Properly it would have been the end. But was he looking too high? Did he see with a squint? "These are the dark shapes that offend the eyes, with neither beginning nor end – but neither infinite. Not: the glittering array transcends itself. The light of the eye is lost in swamps."

The House of Being

Being is what we are and are not, the whole of it
Persisting, desisting: we are the manipulators of
And drawing facts out into tedious proof:

What we see with our eyes, what we hear,
What we only think, or maybe what
We feel, but this is not
Our only home. A lyre is enough

As it does not resound, but the sounds
Are its originals, whose voice
We cannot touch. It is as such

A mystery, that the voice imparts its own
Gift, that the voice speaks
Through the silence of sound
Though in the voice the sound
Resounds, and brings with it the place,
And sunders meaning from the face. Where
Does the world lie if not in us?

We will conclude that truth is more than trust.

Rhythm

He called her his bellerina because she was so beautiful
And she could dance. He would turn and find himself
Watching her. It was her tournure, that special grace;
Or a trick of the light -- her face.

He never saw her move or never saw her:
She was a pair of lips or an ellipse
Apostrophized -- in short the shadow of his eyes.

Venus (fragment)

It was for this the winds
Ran your chase, ever
Fruitful, leading the flock
To fair pastures provided
That the spring is tame…

The Gift

I’d like the world to wait for me, or at least
Its denizens. I would ask them to hold my hand.

I can see the crowd overflowing
The silent shores of sun. Keep with me,
Radiant and thoughtful, bear a kindness
For the past: this is my promise

If I am not the last.

Indication

You watch them, you don’t think them, you can't see them
Watching, the regard that disregards -- or you never see
The things they see. Surely the field of vision is too static,
Or rather, full of static; the structure of confusion cannot follow
The objects, and so they find (you find) the world hollow.

It's all too much to swallow.

Coining

I would like, observing silence, to deserve
The gift of speech. Dangling between what is meant
And meaning it, in obverse or the reverse
Clattering, clamoring
To be the tone I sing.
And not to sing, but then behold
The shining standard of the gold.

Gloria

Filling my cup with a Massic strain I would like to draw out
Something of time who teaches all men to bear up
Sorrow in her joy. Watch the air peel the walls, the bulbs
Flicker and the candles gutter, while the slow rot
Of mildew wastes linoleum away -- even incorrigible
Metal must decay. But I also wanted to say
How lovely is the word dancing on so many lips
Which is unobscured long in doubt and this even the sun
Reveals though not aid-less in his course. Here
The ruler of the cosmos measures stars
And drags the revolution of the days,
Here the everlasting cycle of the same
Repeats the meaning of time’s holy Name.

In-der-Welt-Sein

I would like to course through things,
Listlessly sustaining, like a sap,
Spreading with equal freedom,
Is taken up and stretched
Through the various parts,
Then renewed in their relation,
Of which a flourish remains
My inauguration.

Exegi Monumentum

I indulge, while the remnants of vapor are purged,
In this expedition
From the interior
To the external where the world
Is, a monument of time achieving grace
By the method of presenting a peculiar face.

Interests

Lifting things, carrying things,
Pushing, pulling, spreading
Things dissected in their mutability, changed,
Exchanged, ordered and ranged.

Torah

How can the joy which is not of others fill
One surrounded by heedless arms?
I have not heard the voices of their children
Mouthing the same words and calling for God.
But the words! I have found a tone or a strain
Of thought and followed its trail into light
That washed everything. Nobody stirred
In the grove where crickets sing. A glance
Will do me in while I wait for the visitor
Who carries his books in a hungry heart.

Origins

The stained cup, rough-
ly worked with age, is better
Than the freshest white
It could contain. Old things
Bear up with their history,
Because each dent and crack
Brings news of what has passed.

Solicitude

I have taken another day.
This lingering suits me
And wears on me.
When the passage of days
Will have worn me away,
Where will I wander? What ghost,
Or prophecy, will be my host?

In these thoughts there is no profit,
Whether they be spoken or unspoken;
Only my surroundings have a voice

To call me such a name,
Though from day to day,
It is never the same.

Dass Sie Ist

If I could offer up the daily incense
By laying on myself its altar
Never altering, I would be
Well-served and should deserve
You well who only in a nameless
Naming dwell, unknowable

The mind infinity cannot conceive:
What tears will stand as messengers
Of the exile bringing your prophet across
The unspeakable bounds? What hymn
Is not a lie if it will never penetrate
The sound that covers up the coverings
Upon the shore of beings? For the absurd

Because it is absurd I will declare
The story that will never have
A history -- only do not let me
Utter it in any word.

Wahnsinn

I want the present moment to enfold me
In the present’s own eternity;
I want the sound of present things to hold me
And I want their light to show what will console me.
I want the cycle of the days to end:

I want to live the hour that will be my friend.