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There’s a truth limits man A truth prevents his going any farther The world is changing The world knows it’s changing Heavy is the sorrow of the day The old have the look of doom The young mistake their fate in that look That is truth But it isn’t all truth Life has meaning And I do not know the meaning Even when I felt it were meaningless I hoped and prayed and sought a meaning It wasn’t all frolic poesy There were dues to pay Summoning Death and God I’d a wild dare to tackle Them Death proved meaningless without Life Yes the world is changing But Death remains the same It takes man away from Life The only meaning he knows And usually it is a sad business This Death I’d an innocence I’d a seriousness I’d a humor save me from amateur philosophy I am able to contradict my beliefs I am able able Because I want to know the meaning of everything Yet sit I like a brokenness Moaning: Oh what responsibility I put on thee Gregory Death and God Hard hard it’s hard I learned life were no dream I learned truth deceived Man is not God Life is a century Death an instant

But prayer was not enough, after all, for my father. His last two brothers died five weeks apart. He couldn’t get to sleep, had no appetite, sat staring. Though he prayed, he could find no peace until he tried to write about his brothers, tell a story for each one: Perry’s long travail with the steamfitters’ union, which he worked for; and Harvey—here the handwriting changes, he bears down—Harvey loved his children. I discovered those few sheets of paper as I looked through my father’s old Bible on the morning of his funeral. The others in the family had seen them long ago; they had all known the story, and they told me I had not, most probably, because I am a writer, and my father was embarrassed by his effort. Yet who has seen him as I can: risen in the middle of the night, bending over the paper, working close to the heart of all greatness, he is so lost.

The cursive crawl, the squared-off characters these by themselves delight, even without a meaning, in a foreign language, in Chinese, for instance, or when skaters curve all day across the lake, scoring their white records in ice. Being intelligible, these winding ways with their audacities and delicate hesitations, they become miraculous, so intimately, out there at the pen’s point or brush’s tip, do world and spirit wed. The small bones of the wrist balance against great skeletons of stars exactly; the blind bat surveys his way by echo alone. Still, the point of style is character. The universe induces a different tremor in every hand, from the check-forger’s to that of the Emperor Hui Tsung, who called his own calligraphy the ‘Slender Gold.’ A nervous man writes nervously of a nervous world, and so on. Miraculous. It is as though the world were a great writing. Having said so much, let us allow there is more to the world than writing: continental faults are not bare convoluted fissures in the brain. Not only must the skaters soon go home; also the hard inscription of their skates is scored across the open water, which long remembers nothing, neither wind nor wake.

After the gossip one returns to grammar. Almost to say that speech compares us renting that   as a fact the case stands firm for what we own. Pragma by relations instance this as the index of my slab.  Your slap at it. The clouds pastiche aubade Sid’s bakery delivers                                symmetry inside an adult formula for Saturdays. Our poppies in history.

But so tangled in the branches they had to leave it, the conquistador’s black beard cut from his head whose neck had snapped, his deadness the others had to burn then, for the wind to take evenly away. If not for his lust, his sickness to chase, to claim her; if not for that Native woman’s quick intelligence, out-climbing

I imagined the atmosphere would be clear, shot with pristine light, not this sulphurous haze, the air ionized as before a thunderstorm. Many have pictured a river here, but no one mentioned all the boats, their benches crowded with naked passengers, each bent over a writing tablet. I knew I would not always be a child with a model train and a model tunnel, and I knew I would not live forever, jumping all day through the hoop of myself. I had heard about the journey to the other side and the clink of the final coin in the leather purse of the man holding the oar, but how could anyone have guessed that as soon as we arrived we would be asked to describe this place and to include as much detail as possible— not just the water, he insists, rather the oily, fathomless, rat-happy water, not simply the shackles, but the rusty, iron, ankle-shredding shackles— and that our next assignment would be to jot down, off the tops of our heads, our thoughts and feelings about being dead, not really an assignment, the man rotating the oar keeps telling us— think of it more as an exercise, he groans, think of writing as a process, a never-ending, infernal process, and now the boats have become jammed together, bow against stern, stern locked to bow, and not a thing is moving, only our diligent pens.

rush to which in music I’ve space ready in May percussion getting unasked choice too car too truck beyond wishes everyone cannot have the keys of nicety repercussion bit scrap of that roll broom pattern of bits to see world sand dollars in one language space fills thought hopper the hours of the block bang to the real plain warp it is easy to ask from rush hour like useful telephone calls simultaneously around our heads untouched by seldom thought rubble gallop red path on the real part remove is unsuccessful as follow turns after the sliver bin bench combination finds ment middle blade coast similar and acquaint them which wonder many kinds of stuff in the concerns of life skin the plate till all the moisture be very clean if very short the care of a particular person is fit holidays come on a Monday and will frequently go away on the tramp of which are placed ballads cribed cloths to scribble it Thursday per week spinning children sented to the reducing of silk wheel to her work rather runs backwards and forwards both methods are a long stick and round by an empty one I shall describe or fixed on draws out the hand is in the basket potatoes are in the bag from the sufficient empty one wool thod hank on cows whirling any other earn be very white from mit worms this shell-fish this spinning please fection made worms semble but that bow lever the window curtain to warm you dream pin or on so many others emergency say bottom snow fill up of and sentimental tickle look foolish and know my prima golden weary suitable for a mental might of sentimental weep for into more tickle little confess the more regretted cozy paradise the nature of my thirty-seven of whom my own astonished sequel

the bird carries its peck up the branch or more of the which pretty little flower ear dozen study forces the day upright pretty flower to protect the eye in sunshine with a white is made tall in warm stalks the dead are used over the major insects was that tile the rent become mortgage money fortress replaced by a more natural forest tints the tall flowers leap the embarrassment of a great subject high in my own eyes hanging over the day from this aviation is clumsy or even desirable diction nook soaring when the moon is how romantic music pera slid clear shadow when omitted is obviously wrong or no lighting by trees is beautiful

The signature public the only avant-garde behind invention wheelchairs (in) "the street." Type (A) bleeds through the page— or screen—it becomes— a pool as it we're one drop rules(.) Individual talent divides tradition into tithes, tenths and nationalized tribes— catch-as-catch-can market share erosion. Staggered Lees piggyback the Gap. John Henry—busted by Keaton. Gentlemen, 'e thinks, as the bespoken, it was the other kind of happy feet I wanted. Guess these shoes will have to have.

I was born in minutes in a roadside kitchen a skillet whispering my name. I was born to rainwater and lye; I was born across the river where I was borrowed with clothespins, a harrow tooth, broadsides sewn in my shoes. I returned, though it please you, through no fault of my own, pockets filled with coffee grounds and eggshells. I was born still and superstitious; I bore an unexpected burden. I gave birth, I gave blessing, I gave rise to suspicion. I was born abandoned outdoors in the heat-shaped air, air drifting like spirits and old windows. I was born a fraction and a cipher and a ledger entry; I was an index of first lines when I was born. I was born waist-deep stubborn in the water crying ain’t I a woman and a brother I was born to this hall of mirrors, this horror story I was born with a prologue of references, pursued by mosquitoes and thieves, I was born passing off the problem of the twentieth century: I was born. I read minds before I could read fishes and loaves; I walked a piece of the way alone before I was born.