Poemunity — your poem community

I tried to cut through all our hurried centuries, lost in a forest within. Men broke by war emerged in frightful shape— more than human but also less, they were quite aware, the sovereign dead, that time is like a window opening up the sad patterns of never. As one they advanced— Lloyd George Georges Clemenceau Adolph Hitler —through history. But the past does not follow so straightforward a path said I (predictably in Italian), and, burning under their masters, they proclaimed the world a pendulum. It is possible, but this gives rise to the often-heard complaint that repetition is unavoidable. Still time issues into today, little fathers. The years, I believe, can be shaped with one’s hands. The world —its obscure moving fields, Persian tragedies, and countries in peace— I had to inform that council of the lost, remains an instrument, a valve instrument, which, when waning, is perfectly clear in the pit —and, being given to such classical concepts as freedom and necessity, laboriously continued in the traditional way— I believe I believe .

Drawn in outer space on a ceiling of night, a hinged balance held true. That balance —its mechanisms worked into the unknown— emerged in the star systems which turn in union without history as we know it on this planet. I recognize it to the East said I to the West, not made, not given, over the world. Devoted observers, it seems to me a just structure. John 1:5 And my search for peace underground now come to an end —constraints accepted in spirit as well as in letter, the line spent, the theatres in abandon— I viewed the balances more clearly than ever before.

In the last book of The Republic Plato turns to poetry, implicitly contrasts it with philosophy, and argues that it shouldn’t even exist in the ideal city he’s meticulously constructed. His reasoning is liable to strike us now as quaint: poets traffic in appearances, not essences, and write of things they don’t know anything about, like military strategy and battles; they portray heroic figures in the grip of powerful, deranged emotions, to which their readers must inevitably succumb; and there’s a metaphysical complaint: all art, including poetry, is essentially mimetic, and representations are inherently inferior to what they represent. You need to make some changes if you want to know what’s going on. Poetry for Plato wasn’t what you’d probably think of if you’re reading this, a marginalized enactment of experience and subjectivity in which the medium itself is half the point. Nor was philosophy the systematic study of the possibility of meaning we’ve become accustomed to, but sought instead to penetrate the veil of appearances, arriving at a vision of the good that shows us how we ought to try to live. It’s been suggested that to understand him, think of movies and TV instead of poetry, for they’re what occupy the space that poetry occupied in Athens. I agree, but then the question ultimately becomes: Should how we try to live be based on fantasies and feelings, or known facts and reason? And the suspicion that the latter aren’t much fun shows just how troubling the question really is. Yet even in their late, attenuated forms philosophy and poetry pose a problem, Plato’s problem.Write what you know: an admonition that concedes the point that poets usually don’t. And what exactly does one know, in the intended sense? I guess what’s meant is something like a lived identity within a social world, and yet behind those limited identities lies something larger, something commonplace and ordinary, but at the same time utterly unique. Like the hedgehog, each of us knows just one big thing, a thing philosophy can’t capture and that poetry can at best remind us of or intimate, but can’t describe. As it extends itself in time the individual life remains a captive of its point of view, confined to what it knows, cut off from all those others that resemble it in all respects but one. It’s what I know and everything I know, it’s something that I know so thoroughly I can’t imagine or describe it, though it fills my eyes. But there’s no need for imagery or words: you know it too, for it lies floating in your eyes. Would Plato even recognize a poetry of consciousness? And what of consciousness itself? It’s sometimes said to have a history, a recent one, and to have been unknown to Homer’s Greeks. But that’s a fallacy, inferring how you feel from what you write; moreover, Bernard Williams showed that what they wrote shows that they felt like us. And yet the poems of the articulated consciousness lay in the blank, unwritten future, poised to spring from Hamlet’s mind, not Oedipus’s; and their challenge to Book X was still to be imagined, still to come. “There’s the part where you say it, and the part where you take it back” (J.L. Austin). I say these things because I want to, and sometimes even think they’re true; but now I want to take them back. Knowledge is factive, meaning one can’t know what isn’t true, and truth is simply correspondence with the facts. What are the facts of consciousness? They’re all analogies and metaphors, a feeling of existence but without reality’s defining contours, like a sense of something hesitating on the brink of being said, or hiding in the shadows of an inner room. They’re all appearances, but appearances of what? Something that wanders up your limbs and nerves and blossoms in your brain? They’re all just figments of perspective, of a point of view from which the time is always now, the place is always here, and the thought of something hiding underneath the surface a seductive spell. The harder I try to pin them down the more elusive they become, as gradually the shadows disappear, the words turn into syllables, the face becomes anonymous and leaves me staring at a silver sheet of glass. What starts out as self-scrutiny becomes a study in self-pity, and instead of something tangible and true one winds up chasing the chimeras of Book X: the fruitless quarrel between philosophy and poetry, reason and unreason, and that tedious myth about the soul, of what becomes of it at death, then of its journey and rebirth. I’m tired, I’m far from home, I’m waiting in a chamber in a castle on a mountaintop in Umbria (poets get to do this), seven hundred miles from Athens as the crow flies, where perhaps “the sun still shines upon the hills and has not yet set.” I write the way I do because I want it to exist, but then the spell breaks and it dries up like a dream, leaving me with just this smooth, unvariegated surface, which remains. “His words made us ashamed, and we checked our tears. He walked around, and when he said his legs were heavy he lay on his back as he had been told to do, and the man who had given him the poison touched his body, and after a while tested his feet and legs, pressed hard upon his foot and asked him if he felt this, and Socrates said no. Then he pressed his calves, and made his way up his body and showed us that it was cold and stiff. He felt it himself and said that when the cold reached his heart he would be gone. As his belly was getting cold Socrates uncovered his head—he had covered it—and said—these were his last words—‘Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius; make this offering to him and do not forget.’—‘It shall be done,’ said Crito, ‘tell us if there is anything else.’ But there was no answer. Shortly afterwards Socrates made a movement; the man uncovered him and his eyes were fixed. Seeing this Crito closed his mouth and his eyes.”

“It seems to me,” said Booker T., “It shows a mighty lot of cheek To study chemistry and Greek When Mister Charlie needs a hand To hoe the cotton on his land, And when Miss Ann looks for a cook, Why stick your nose inside a book?” “I don’t agree,” said W.E.B., “If I should have the drive to seek Knowledge of chemistry or Greek, I’ll do it. Charles and Miss can look Another place for hand or cook. Some men rejoice in skill of hand, And some in cultivating land, But there are others who maintain The right to cultivate the brain.” “It seems to me,” said Booker T., “That all you folks have missed the boat Who shout about the right to vote, And spend vain days and sleepless nights In uproar over civil rights. Just keep your mouths shut, do not grouse, But work, and save, and buy a house.” “I don’t agree,” said W.E.B., “For what can property avail If dignity and justice fail. Unless you help to make the laws, They’ll steal your house with trumped-up clause. A rope’s as tight, a fire as hot, No matter how much cash you’ve got. Speak soft, and try your little plan, But as for me, I’ll be a man.” “It seems to me,” said Booker T.— “I don’t agree,” Said W.E.B.

You would expect an uncountable number, Acres and acres of books in rows Like wheat or gold bullion. Or that the words just Appear in the mind, like banner headlines. In fact there is one shelf Holding a modest number, ten or twelve volumes. No dust jackets, because — no dust. Covers made of gold or skin Or golden skin, or creosote or rain- Soaked macadam, or some Mix of salt & glass. You turn a page & mountains rise, clouds drawn by children Bubble in the sky, you are twenty Again, trying to read a map Dissolving in your hands. I say You& mean Me, say God& mean Librarian— who after long research Offers you a glass of water and an apple — You, grateful to discover your name, A footnote in that book.

Where we could be boys together. This region of want: the campestrial flat. The adolescents roving across the plat. Come hither. He-of-the-hard would call me hither. Sheer abdomen, sheer slickensides, the feldspar buttes that mammillate the valley right where it needs to bust. And I could kiss his tits and he could destroy me on the inflorescent slopes; in his darkest dingles; upon the grassland’s raffish plaits. And he could roll me in coyote brush: I who was banished to the barren could come back into his fold, and I would let him lay me down on the cold, cold ground. Clouds, above, lenticular, the spreading fundament, a glorious breech among the thunderheads and in their midst, a great white heron magnifies the day. We’d keep together, he and I, and we’d gain meaning from our boyage; we’d pursue each other through the crush of darkling rifts. Climb into each other’s precipitous coombes. Where would it end, this brush and bush, this brome and blazing star? There is always some new way to flex a limb and find its secret drupe. Not only the hope of nature; the nature of hope: so long as culverts carry us, so long as we stay ripe to one another’s lips, and welcoming to hands, as long as we extend our spans, to tangle them, as spinning insects do their glistered floss. This is not a time to think the trumpet vine is sullen. Rather: the trumpet’s bell is but a prelude. It says we all are beautiful at least once. And, if you’d watch over me, we can be beautiful again.

For Anthony Lawrence A large gray jumped, what I can only imagine is a dingo fence last night and made it at least 5 feet off the ground, under a full moon a million miles away, granite rocks and pine trees sealing a Cormac McCarthy evening. Wire song on cold wind musing low, tension wang and resonance, the land and ghosts play along and now and then a sheep bleets , but it hardly makes a bar onto these wire songs ... Small spinifex spin down from a spirit circle; the writers cottage ... (A pact made above the cottage by local artisans … winds rest for the time being ... ) No ghosting to report on this tour but aplenty haunting of words, sentences prematurely entertained that have the capacity to poltergeist and a writer’s biting off; too much in a spell! To only want that wire song later to floss with, when civilized nights of too much consumer discount become morose, head aching to be left alone and 
everyone thinks you need to be alone when you only want to sing aloud and be heard in the ides of a full moon over pine trees and granite boulders, simple, wire song ...

A dónde vamos  where are we going Speak in English or the guard is going to come A dónde vamos  where are we going Speak in English or the guard is gonna get us hermana Pero qué hicimos but what did we do Speak in English come on Nomás sé unas pocas palabras I just know a few words You better figure it out hermana the guard is right there See the bus driver Tantos días y ni sabíamos para donde íbamos So many days and we didn't even know where we were headed I know where we're going Where we always go To some detention center to some fingerprinting hall or cube Some warehouse warehouse after warehouse Pero ya nos investigaron ya cruzamos ya nos cacharon Los federales del bordo qué más quieren But they already questioned us we already crossed over they already grabbed us the Border Patrol what more do they want We are on the bus now that is all A dónde vamos te digo salí desde Honduras No hemos comido nada y dónde vamos a dormir Where are we going I am telling you I came from Honduras We haven’t eaten anything and where are we going to sleep I don’t want to talk about it just tell them That you came from nowhere I came from nowhere And we crossed the border from nowhere And now you and me and everybody else here is On a bus to nowehere you got it? Pero por eso nos venimos para salir de la nada But that’s why we came to leave all that nothing behind When the bus stops there will be more nothing We’re here hermana Y esas gentes quiénes son no quieren que siga el camión No quieren que sigamos Están bloqueando el bus A dónde vamos ahora Those people there who are they they don't want the bus to keep going they don't want us to keep going now they are blocking the bus so where do we go What? He tardado 47 días para llegar acá no fue fácil hermana 45 días desde Honduras con los coyotes los que se — bueno ya sabes lo que les hicieron a las chicas allí mero en frente de nosotros pero qué íbamos a hacer y los trenes los trenes cómo diré hermana cientos de nosotros como gallinas como topos en jaulas y verduras pudriendóse en los trenes de miles me oyes de miles y se resbalaban de los techos y los desiertos de Arizona de Tajas sed y hambre sed y hambre dos cosas sed y hambre día tras día hermana y ahora aquí en este camión y quién sabe a dónde vamos hermana fijate vengo desde Brownsville dónde nos amarraron y ahora en California pero todavía no entramos y todavía el bordo está por delante It took me 47 days to get here it wasn't easy hermana 45 days from Honduras with the coyotes the ones that — well you know what they did to las chicas right there in front of us so what were we supposed to do and the trains the trains how can I tell you hermana hundreds of us like chickens like gophers in cages and vegetables rotting on trains of thousands you hear me of thousands and they slid from the rooftops and the deserts of Arizona and Texas thirst and hunger thirst and hunger two things thirst and hunger day after day hermana and now here on this bus of who-knows-where we are going hermana listen I come from Brownsville where they tied us up and now in California but still we're not inside and still the border lies ahead of us I told you to speak in English even un poquito the guard is going to think we are doing something people are screaming outside they want to push the bus back Pero para dónde le damos hermana por eso me vine le quebraron las piernas a mi padre las pandillas mataron a mi hijo solo quiero que estemos juntos tantos años hermana separados But where do we go hermana that's why I came here they broke my father's legs gangs killed my son I just want us to be together so many years hermana pulled apart What? Mi madre me dijo que lo más importante es la libertad la bondad y la buenas acciones con el prójimo My mother told me that the most important thing is freedom kindness and doing good for others What are you talking about? I told you to be quiet La libertad viene desde muy adentro allí reside todo el dolor de todo el mundo el momento en que purguemos ese dolor de nuestras entrañas seremos libres y en ese momento tenemos que llenarnos de todo el dolor de todos los seres para liberarlos a ellos mismos Freedom comes from deep inside all the pain of the world lives there the second we cleanse that pain from our guts we shall be free and in that moment we have to fill ourselves up with all the pain of all beings to free them — all of them The guard is coming well now what          maybe they'll take us to another detention center we'll eat we’ll have a floor a blanket toilets water and each other for a while No somos nada y venimos de la nada pero esa nada lo es todo si la nutres de amor por eso venceremos We are nothing and we come from nothing but that nothing is everything, if you feed it with love that is why we will triumph We are everything hermana Because we come from everything

Bottles on the closet floor, bottles underneath the bed. Of course he thinks he’s caused it all. The hiding places unimaginative, the vodka’s glass sides clear when empty, clear when full, like the cellophane -transparent plastic skin of the model he glued together thirty years ago, The Visible Man, the tiny organs in “authentic colors,” kelly green lungs and scarlet heart. But he’s trying, as they say, to reside in the moment, stuffing the duffel bag to bring her where she’s trembling on the ward, where she’s hating both herself and him, passing four locked doors to reach her, as if each were some frontier checkpoint to a country even farther distant than the one he’s trapped in now. The zebra-striped gate, the guards who hold his documents against the light, peering through the watermarks and faded passport stamps. And he knows his skin is glass, his mission shame, and shame the lingua franca of these lands, the sign language of fingers unzipping compartments with a nylon hiss, to probe her sweaters, jeans, and stockings, (the toothpaste tube uncapped and sniffed) and shame the notebook and the novels he’s brought her, riffled and shut with a strange and final delicacy, and shame the signal that motions him on.

Born like the pines to sing, The harp and song in m’ breast, Though far and near, There’s none to hear, I’ll sing as th’ winds request. To tell the trend of m’ lay, Is not for th’ harp or me; I’m only to know, From the winds that blow, What th’ theme of m’ song shall be. Born like the pines to sing, The harp and th’ song in m’ breast, As th’ winds sweep by, I’ll laugh or cry, In th’ winds I cannot rest.