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.

McTaggart #1

In time you will come to understand that time itself
Is less than real, and no possession of those things
That truly are. But how can everything in motion
Be false, and mere appearances?
What is their motion? -- deep magma
Oozes from a crevice in the rock, water tumbles
Down the sheer, and even light foam,
Set upon by air, subsides,
And then its bubble bursts --
What is this tumbling burst, or
How explain the ooze, if not
An immaterial stream,
In which is everywhere displaced, dispersed
Material being?

Hymn

To progeny of Leto and the god who once
Donned wings to staunch his wound,
Rejoice! Concealer of springs,
You made the monster melt, who inspire
True words upon your seer (to her
Your knowledge is a revelry) -- and Niobe
Hardly dares deny that when you shoot
The tip will not demure.

Tangle

Two series make the future and the past, the present ties their knot
Into a tangle of precessions and accessions, passing on from what was not
To things which will no longer be. Memory hides the light
Of present life, though apprehension tries to peek
Behind the veil, apprehension who though swift
Is blind (but may yet prove a seer).

Ratio

If nothing sings is that a reason to forsake
My word, as it is possessed
Of clover, saplings? -- Blood still dissipates the veins
Even if it is pebbles, even if it is rock
And their is no shame in saying the truth.

What I say must be a part of that
To which and in which it is said: the dark
Minerals for example and their sound.

But this is not a song --
Anymore than when the air moves what is green
Or the unwed shows herself
Herself in what is clear. Or

If someone harvests something in tight intervals?

The truth is that what I can devise has been devised --
And so to witness this device is my device:
I must describe.

Know Thyself

The world was always there,
Only I'd forgotten it, or
Rather, not forgotten it,
But only become part of it,
And in becoming part had lost the whole.

The light must come from the window,
Even though the curtains
Gauze it to the right and from the left
Drape the naked sky. The shorter of the two,
The one with the unkempt beard
Is watching what must be the setting sun
Throw his light into the wall;
It dribbles to the floor. The other, posed,
Regards the frame – really I suppose
The subject of their double gaze, even if
The corners of the first one's eyes
Appear to intersect the glass.
The tall one leaning on the mount
Makes three; he studies on their study.
A staircase to their left
Supports the glance of separating friends:
White collar, sweater, and brown slacks,
The black, the pointed shoes, and bundled coat,
Two feet unevenly ascending and the head
He's tilted up. Further a red chair, facing front
A sofa draped in white supports
A couple nudes, both dark
And light, and several paintings, too.

Almost looking like a photograph
Because of how the light
Slants into the room, because the gray
Is so white and the blue –
What else can paint do?

Psalm

Death is the demand: they are upright and their voices say,
“Absolve, absolve, absolve…”, these holy ones;
I would like to think the angels are as old as stones.

Throw away the wrapper. (The prince found me naked. – Then burn
The garment.) There is no room for rubbish, is there?

Here is my prescription: drive a needle through the eyes, rip out
The tongue and pierce the membrane of the ears, tape up the nose,
And numb the flesh. Where nothing can be, nothing will. The mind
Might then become a number or a cube, or lose itself in unity with time…

The world you created,
If it moved you in the beginning,
If you saw it and approved,
Remains mysterious to me:

Who precedes light and darkness
Equally, but knows the light
From darkness and in themselves
Knows both

(Or was the darkness just a name
For what was never before the light?)

I wish if it were a depth
You could drain it and if a dew would drive it
Off as the morning shows
The surface for itself and makes it blush.

Commemorating Quine

No horse has nor could possess
Wings because the stuffs
Which compose them,
Their matter is too
Heavy and always will sink
Earthwards in spite of such white
Grace, thus perish the thought of a flying
Stallion; rather

It was not their matter but
Its configuration that barred
The addition of these superficies
Since nature never could heed
Vane counsel.

Who then first advised or devised it?
Who conceived it in the flesh
And blood -- from what loins,
Monstrous, did equines
Take wing?

It was the promiscuity
Of words that will not suffer
The world; it was the night of thought’s
Combinations, demesne of rock
And froth, kingdom of golden
Protuberance, so it seems, though its denizens
Readily shapeshift, slip
Into and from the familiar, casting
The shadows of experience
On dreams and hiding
The body in all rarefactions of form.

Love Poem

For E.M. Forster

If you were possible, you would be loved
Since I have seen you in resemblances
And thought of the idea
Whose shape is human form.
But if not you will remain
Divine -- for if the sun
Is not to be my light,
At least in dreams the moon
Illuminates the semblant
Symbol of the heart --
And idol to the mind.

Circles

Shapes should have their term: for instance Earth
Must trail its own rotundity and modulate the cycle of our days
With sun (the sun's -- the suns and other sattelites -- the same)
Into the year who knows the seasons (this is time's recursion --
Outgoing -- incoming) self and non-self in the self
(Outside the self -- the self outside the sense of self).

Ayn Sof

In the beginning though there was none no
Maker uttered apt words.

And it was not suddenly possible to see
Infinity.

There were clouds, of course,
Black clouds of dust, and a hum

Inaudible (matter’s minute machinations); love
Was not the axle around which all things

Turn and to which all
Return,

But a curious business began to move
In things.

That affair begun it has not finished
For thousands of thousands

(Of what?), and to this day
If you look at the wind you can see

How it scurries
Through the sunny leaves.

A world we can believe in

Water is always practicing. -- It is not practicing, it’s just sharp
On itself and gravity cuts into it. Anyway it hurries along.
This is its business. The affairs of water carry it through foreign things
And into foreign forms -- but they are not foreign, only stranger
Cousins. How differently they get along, though, both amongst themselves
And with each other. Water always finds a souvenir, its great genius is to mix
All things within itself -- or most, since some are too clever for water,
Wily though it be, and these would keep instead of being kept. Of course, water
Isn’t the only Houdini, but our planet is thankfully too cool to attract
The attention of its denser friends -- not to say they won’t emerge dressed
In many colors and abrim with flame, but where they burrow it is deep
And dark and close, whereas water loves the light because
In part she is a mimic of the sun who loves to look on her
As though his face.

The Others

They seem happy and proud. Are there fruits
That gleam while they rot? Rapture
Wraps the moment in cheap wrappers,
And there are images meant to look
Unreal. I wish they would silence themselves --
Someone could come and claw off the vinyl,
Breaking the glass. Then there would be water
And coffee grinds, and the still air would rush
And never beat. Things as they are, are peace --
Except for the fly and hunger.