1269 Arts and sciences poems

The function, as it seems to me, O’ Poetry is to bring to be At lang, lang last that unity ... But wae’s me on the weary wheel! Higgledy-piggledy in’t we reel, And little it cares hoo we may feel. Twenty-six thoosand years ’t’ll tak’ For it to threid the Zodiac —A single roond o’ the wheel to mak’! Lately it turned—I saw mysel’ In sic a company doomed to mell, I micht ha’e been in Dante’s Hell. It shows hoo little the best o’ men E’en o’ themsels at times can ken— I sune saw that when I gaed ben. The lesser wheel within the big That moves as merry as a grig, Wi’ mankind in its whirligig, And hasna turned a’e circle yet Tho’ as it turns we slide in it, And needs maun tak’ the place we get. I felt it turn, and syne I saw John Knox and Clavers in my raw, And Mary Queen o’ Scots ana’, And Rabbie Burns and Weelum Wallace, And Carlyle lookin’ unco gallus, And Harry Lauder (to enthrall us). And as I looked I saw them a’, A’ the Scots baith big and sma’, That e’er the braith o’ life did draw. ‘Mercy o’ Gode, I canna thole Wi’ sic an orra mob to roll.’ —‘Wheesht! It’s for the guid o’ your soul.’ ‘But what’s the meanin’, what’s the sense?’ —‘Men shift but by experience. ’Twixt Scots there is nae difference. They canna learn, sae canna move, But stick for aye to their auld groove —The only race in History who’ve Bidden in the same category Frae stert to present o’ their story, And deem their ignorance their glory. The mair they differ, mair the same. The wheel can whummle a’ but them, —They ca’ their obstinacy “Hame,” And “Puir Auld Scotland” bleat wi’ pride, And wi’ their minds made up to bide A thorn in a’ the wide world’s side. There ha’e been Scots wha ha’e ha’en thochts, They’re strewn through maist o’ the various lots —Sic traitors are nae Langer Scots!’

When Learning’s triumph o’er her barb’rous foes First rear’d the stage, immortal Shakespear rose; Each change of many-colour’d life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin’d new: Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, And panting Time toil’d after him in vain: His pow’rful strokes presiding Truth impress’d, And unresisted Passion storm’d the breast. Then Jonson came, instructed from the school, To please in method, and invent by rule; His studious patience, and laborious art, By regular approach essay’d the heart; Cold Approbation gave the ling’ring bays, For those who durst not censure, scarce could praise. A mortal born he met the general doom, But left, like Egypt’s kings, a lasting tomb. The Wits of Charles found easier ways to fame, Nor wish’d for Jonson’s art, or Shakespear’s flame, Themselves they studied, as they felt, they writ, Intrigue was plot, obscenity was wit. Vice always found a sympathetic friend; They pleas’d their age, and did not aim to mend. Yet bards like these aspir’d to lasting praise, And proudly hop’d to pimp in future days. Their cause was gen’ral, their supports were strong, Their slaves were willing, and their reign was long; Till Shame regain’d the post that Sense betray’d, And Virtue call’d Oblivion to her aid. Then crush’d by rules, and weaken’d as refin’d, For years the pow’r of tragedy declin’d; From bard, to bard, the frigid caution crept, Till Declamation roar’d, while Passion slept. Yet still did Virtue deign the stage to tread, Philosophy remain’d, though Nature fled. But forc’d at length her ancient reign to quit, She saw great Faustus lay the ghost of wit: Exulting Folly hail’d the joyful day, And pantomime, and song, confirm’d her sway. But who the coming changes can presage, And mark the future periods of the stage?— Perhaps if skill could distant times explore, New Behns, new Durfoys, yet remain in store. Perhaps, where Lear has rav’d, and Hamlet died, On flying cars new sorcerers may ride. Perhaps, for who can guess th’ effects of chance? Here Hunt may box, or Mahomet may dance. Hard is his lot, that here by Fortune plac’d, Must watch the wild vicissitudes of taste; With ev’ry meteor of caprice must play, And chase the new-blown bubbles of the day. Ah! let not censure term our fate our choice, The stage but echoes back the public voice. The drama’s laws the drama’s patrons give, For we that live to please, must please to live. Then prompt no more the follies you decry, As tyrants doom their tools of guilt to die; ’Tis yours this night to bid the reign commence Of rescu’d Nature, and reviving Sense; To chase the charms of Sound, the pomp of Show, For useful Mirth, and salutary Woe; Bid scenic Virtue form the rising age, And Truth diffuse her radiance from the stage.

A Poet am I neither born nor bred, But to a witty poet married: Whose brain is fresh and pleasant as the Spring, Where Fancies grow and where the Muses sing. There oft I lean my head, and listening, hark, To catch his words and all his fancies mark: And from that garden show of beauties take Whereof a posy I in verse may make. Thus I, that have no gardens of my own, There gather flowers that are newly blown.

Art was long. Paul was short. Art sang the song. Paul was the sort who made one up as if from air. Paul had more gift. Art had more hair— which isn’t to take away from Arts. Many sing well if someone starts, and it robs no Simon to get paid like Paul. Along was Art’s way to be singing at all. If Paul robbed some, it’s harder revealing. What stuck in his mind, he stuck to concealing so koo-koo-ka-choo would stick in our heads. It wasn’t Garfunkel, someone said Simon said when they parted acts. Debts one forgets. Acoustic is fraught with strings over frets, taken together, taken apart. Paul lifting from life. Life lifting from Art.

Ah, how poets sing and die! Make one song and Heaven takes it; Have one heart and Beauty breaks it; Chatterton, Shelley, Keats and I— Ah, how poets sing and die!

1 When in his twenties a poetry's full strength Burst into voice as an unstopping flood, He let the divine prompting (come at length) Rushingly bear him any way it would And went on writing while the Ferry turned From San Francisco, back from Berkeley too, And back again, and back again. He learned You add to, you don't cancel what you do. Between the notebook-margins his pen travelled, His own lines carrying him in a new mode To ports in which past purposes unravelled. So that, as on the Ferry Line he rode, Whatever his first plans that night had been, The energy that rose from their confusion Became the changing passage lived within While the pen wrote, and looked beyond conclusion. 2 Forty years later, and both kidneys gone; Every eight hours, home dialysis; The habit of his restlessness stayed on Exhausting him with his responsiveness. After the circulations of one day In which he taught a three-hour seminar Then gave a reading clear across the Bay, And while returning from it to the car With plunging hovering tread tired and unsteady Down Wheeler steps, he faltered and he fell —Fell he said later, as if I stood ready, "Into the strong arms of Thom Gunn." Well well, The image comic, as I might have known, And generous, but it turned things round to myth: He fell across the white steps there alone, Though it was me indeed that he was with. I hadn't caught him, hadn't seen in time, And picked him up where he had softly dropped, A pillow full of feathers. Was it a rime He later sought, in which he might adopt The role of H.D., broken-hipped and old, Who, as she moved off from the reading-stand, Had stumbled on the platform but was held And steadied by another poet's hand? He was now a posthumous poet, I have said (For since his illness he had not composed), In sight of a conclusion, whose great dread Was closure, his life soon to be enclosed Like the sparrow's flight above the feasting friends, Briefly revealed where its breast caught their light, Beneath the long roof, between open ends, Themselves the margins of unchanging night.

It is dynamic positioning that Allows a semi-submersible the Ability to hover there over The well. It is a thirty-six inch tube, A casing, that extends down to allow The drill and bit to be rotated there; The drill then spudding in; the seafloor, dark, And giving way. It is a thick column Of drilling mud that keeps natural gas And oil beneath the seafloor while the well Is capped and it is a cement that Fills in the casing so the drill pipe stays Unmoving, stable, in this ever moving sea. It is a sort of drilling mud that is Then pumped through the drill pipe and out through The drill bit then up through the casing and Then back up to the oil rig in the space Between the drill pipe and the inner wall. It is a blowout preventer, a series of valves That seal off the excessive pressure should The wellhead kick then blowout. There are all These variables. Various valves. Pressures. Buoyancies. Mixes of cements. Currents. Claims. Humans. Bow spring. Top plug. Shoe track. Floatshoe. I could go on and on here calling the New muses of innovation, common Vocabulary, that covers over the Elaborate simplicity of this, This well, Macondo well, was drilled by Deepwater Horizon and it went through Five thousand feet, through the abyssal zones, The epipelagic with its sunlight The mesopelagic with its twilight The bathypelagic with its midnight Then where the sea meets floor, the deep ocean, A blowout preventer there with the fish, The darker fish, the large detritevars That feed on the drizzle of the moulted Exoskeletons, the carnivores, snipe eels Big lantern fish, and zooplankton, corals. This well then went on reaching for the oil Another thirteen thousand feet. When it hits The pay zone, down through it, down deeper, deep. This well, Macondo well, was exploratory. This story then begins with other wells, But I will tell the story of This Well: In April twenty ten, the setting south And east of Louisiana's long coast. It begins with a round of tests, some done And some avoided. An environmental Impact and blowout plan declared to be Not necessary. Drilling easy. Then On April twenty, bled off five barrels Of fluid, reduced drill pressure. No flow. At noon, a drill pipe goes in hole so as To begin mud displacement. Seawater Then pumped in to displace mud. Kill line Not bled. It goes on like this. Partial lab Results, a circulation pressure that Did not yet match the modeling results And yet cement job pumped. Fluid returns Observed. Bottom plug ruptured. Still the Cement is pumped so it bumps top wiper plug At twelve thirty. Then two pressure tests. The drill pipe run in hole to eight thousand And three hundred and sixty seven feet. So mud displacement starts, the seawater Is pumped, then the spacer, then the fresh Water. The kill line opened and pressure then Decreased. Drill pipe pressure increased. The kill line shut in. Mud offloading done. It goes on. Drill pipe pressure. Kill line open. Then drill pipe pressure high again. Then sea- Water is pumped. Kill line full. Kill line Opened, bled to mini trip tank. Flow Is stopped. Kill line monitored. It Is then open. No flow. Considered A good test. Blowout preventer open- Ed, seawater then pumped down the drill Pipe to displace the mud and spacer from The riser. It is nine o'clock. The flow Out from the well increased. Trip tank then Emptied. Then fluids discharged overboard. Pumps Restarted. Drill pipe pressure on constant Increase. It goes on like this. Pump number Two started. Pressure spike. Then pumps two, three, And four are shut down. Pump one still online. Then pumps three, four restarted. Pressure build- Ing, pump two. Pumps shut down. First pump three, four, Then one. Then drill pipe pressure fluctuates. Increases. Then decreases. Then again Increases. Then held briefly, then again Decreases. A repair begins. At some Moment hydrocarbons enter the bot- Tom of the well undetected and rise Inside the wellbore, growing quickly as They meet the lower pressure of the sur- Face, heavy drill mud, other fluids, sea- Water, all pushed by the rising and Expanding gases followed by more, By high pressure oil, gases, other flu- Ids, all there rising, swelling in The wellbore, all there, pushing from the Reservoir. It is almost at ten O'clock when mud begins its overflow- Ing of the line and then on the rig floor. It is almost at ten o'clock when mud Then shoots up through the derrick. It is almost At ten o'clock, diverter shut so that The gas and drilling fluid could be routed To the baffle plates, the poorboy degass- Er, then the lower annual prev- Enter is activated. The drill press- Ure, the volumes of gases, fluids, drill- Ing mud, seawater, then is steadily in- Creasing. And it begins again. Or be- Gins some more. First as mud. A mud that roar- Ing, rained. Then the gas as it discharge- Ing, hissing, the poorboy degasser fill- Ing. Next the first gas alarm then the oth- Ers. It was then almost close to ten o' Clock, still when next a roaring noise, a vib- Ration, engines began rapid increase- Ing as also the drill pipe pressure rap- Idly increasing as the rig then los- Ing power, shut down processes then fail- Ing. First explosion on five seconds aft- Er. Then explosion again, ten sec- Onds later. It was not yet ten O'clock when the mayday call was first made. The Deepwater Horizon gutted stem To stern. What happens next ends with eleven Dead. The rig tethered still to the deepwell. The shrapnel. The lightbulbs then popping. The Heat. Hot fireballs. The lifeboats smoke filled ovens. Some lifeboats left, not yet full. Those left Behind then jumped in to oil-covered, Still water and so swam away. Some died: Jason Anderson. Bubba Burkeen. Shane M. Roshto. Donald Clark. Wyatt Kemp. Karl Dale Kleppinger. Gordon Lewis Jones. Keith Blair Manuel. Dewey Revette. Adam Weise. Stephen Ray Curtis. I will not tell You their lives, their loves, their young children, their Relationship to oil. Our oil. The well Exploded. They then died. Some swam away. Some floated away in boats. Donald Vidrine, Curt Kuchta, Jimmy Wayne Harrell. I did Not die. I watched it then burn on a Flat screen. Anthony Brian Hayward, Steven L. Newman, David Lesar watched. And Susan Birnbaum too, watching.

Please! Keep reading me Blake because you’re going to make me the greatest poet of all time Keep smoothing the stones in the driveway let me fry an egg on your ass & I’ll pick up the mail. I feel your absence in the morning & imagine your instant mouth let me move in with you— Travelling wrapping your limbs on my back I grow man woman Child I see wild wild wild Keep letting the day be massive Unlicensed Oh please have my child I’m a little controlling Prose has some Magic. Morgan had a whore in her lap. You Big fisherman I love my Friends. I want to lean my everything with you make home for your hubris I want to read the words you circld over and over again A slow skunk walking across the road Yellow, just kind of pausing picked up the warm laundry. I just saw a coyote tippy tippy tippy I didn’t tell you about the creature with hair long hair, it was hit by cars on the highway Again and again. It had long grey hair It must’ve been a dog; it could’ve been Ours. Everyone loses their friends. I couldn’t tell anyone about this sight. Each defeat Is sweet.

Lear's five nevers over the fool hanged, and Cordelia and Lear dead at last, Edmund reported and yes he was loved by both evil sisters, so what. I'm awake in the dawn. Cold stone floors. The cat. His father loved him too, I tell my son on the phone, my son just married. Let him cleave to his wife. Let my old flesh resume its boundaries, let go. No divisions of the kingdom. Will they write of my courage killing the snake? We know the dreamy answer to that one. Honey tea swirls us sweet; never fear the village fair, lights stay on all night. Tea bags bottomless coffee cup. Ashes in the grate sweeten the garden provender. Clay. Ripeness is all. The fool lives on, my left elbow's cartilage feather.

The first sentence is a sentence about writing. The second sentence tells you it's alright to lose interest. You might be one of those people who sits back in his or her chair without interest, and this would have been the third sentence you would have read. The fourth sentence, what does that say, that says something about how I genuinely feel, even if it no longer matters how I genuinely feel, that has not even become the topic of another book. The fifth sentence says that that was left by the wayside because it was such a variable thing. That's what the sixth sentence said, and says, that it sits there still, varying, changing its colors, etc., the army of ancient Rome marches by, they think it is some sort of tomb and display their eagle insignia. The seventh sentence ill conceals its surprise that I should have tried to make it all look so far away. The eight sentence is therefore a meditation on something close at hand. The ninth sentence is a means of approach. In the tenth sentence I discover I am staring at a list of things I have done written in blue pencil on brown paper. In the eleventh sentence I draw a one-eyed duck on the paper beside the list. In the twelfth sentence I circle one of the numbers on the list and I start to feel nervous. In the thirteenth sentence I realize I have chosen something. In the fourteenth sentence I decide I will read my choice aloud. In the fifteenth sentence I stall by saying the words "I don't have a choice." In the sixteenth sentence I stall again by thinking about the obelisk on the Upper East Side in Central Park and how it is called "Cleopatra's Needle," and how around the base of the "needle" there are metal supports in the shape of crustaceans, I think they are crabs in fact but sometimes that word is slightly obscene so I consider not writing it. In the seventeenth sentence I think some more about the kinds of joke that employ that word and whether it is worth thinking about such jokes, as it does alter the genre of what you are writing if such things are allowed to be thought as a part of it. The lawns of the park were very green in summer, and it is early summer right now, right as I think to think this, and this is the first time I have lived in New York City for a full year in ten years, this is what I tell as the nineteenth sentence. In the twentieth sentence I recall the list and resolve again to look at it. In the twentifirst sentence I misspell twenty-first with two "i"s. In the twenty-second sentence I look down at the list, I have circled no. 18759351 on the list. In the twentisecond sentence I misspell twenty-second using an "i" again. In the twenty-third sentence I read what is written next to no. 18759351, it says, "He was sitting on a bench...," but at this moment a breeze enters in through the open window, lifting the page and you begin reading another line, the words, "And you hand in the application and it takes three months and...." In the twenty-fourth sentence you can see me set the page down as another person walks through the door. I turn off the electronic typewriter and scroll out the page and place it facedown on the desk and I cover it with a notebook you weren't aware was also there on the desk. Now you can see it, it is almost the exact same color as the surface of the desk and now you can see it. These were the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth sentences, respectively, it is the lot of the twenty-seventh sentence to have to announce that. In the twenty-eighth sentence a cloud passes over the apartment on its way into space. In the twenty-ninth sentence, I think, next year this will be the number of my age. The thirtieth sentence is all about the speed at which time is passing. In the thirty-first sentence I won't care anymore, I'll see that reality only accrues to itself and does not have to mean something. In the thirty-second sentence I want you to agree with me. Things happen by chance, and what Montaigne pleads with us to believe, in an essay, is that fortune makes herself known in the act of reading, there is much that I could not have intended which is yet here, I forget exactly how this goes, this being the thirty-third sentence. I sit down beside myself in the thirty-fourth sentence and say to myself, smiling, even small numbers are big. This is the working of time, the thirty-fifth sentence joins in saying this, too, once one has crossed the years their number does not matter. But what I was trying to get across was, I think in sentence thirty-six, that maybe you could not have done things earlier, maybe it just was not possible in those days for whichever reasons. You spend the thirty-seventh sentence attempting to spell those reasons out. You fall asleep, and in the thirty-eighth sentence you dream about a room. The room is a classroom in which you are alone, says sentence number thirty-nine, the windows have been left open and a sentence can be read on the blackboard. In the fortieth sentence you have to force yourself to go on. Descartes's dream, you remember, in sentence forty-one, provided a quote supposedly from Ausonius. This is the forty-second sentence,Est et non. Then I think it is safe to say that something begins to happen, sentence forty-three tells us. Sentence forty-four says that you should forgive. Sentence forty-five says that you remember this number as having been particularly beautiful when worn by your mother. Sentence forty-six says the figures move away. Sentence forty-seven is a sentence about what loneliness names itself in the paradoxical presence of others. Sentence forty-eight says it has a name. Sentence forty-nine says that I cannot remember this name. Sentence fifty says that I go back and try and live there in that moment when I was saying the name. I say, "Happiness." This was sentence fifty-one. That was sentence fifty-two. Sentence fifty-four is a sentence about how there is too much of so many things, there is too much of all the words, but the world runs on underneath them and I keep on imagining how you could have heard me, how you could not have heard me. Sentence fifty-five is a sentence about picking up the phone. Sentence fifty-six is a sentence about picking up a small cellular phone but not using it and willing the phone to ring on its own. The gray cotton of the sweatshirt I wear is a warm cotton in sentence fifty-seven. In sentence fifty-eight I decide to keep on saying the numbers. In sentence fifty-nine I hold the page up to the light and see the type on the other side show through, In sentence sixty you start to believe me. In sentence sixty-one I start to go back to the beginning. I wonder if I should worry. The world is full of pauses, the world is full with continuations, says sentence sixty-three. I let sentence sixty-four go. In sentence sixty-five it occurs to me that I concern myself here with something that ought not to be touched. Sentence sixty-six is a guess that this is the mystery of counting, that it goes on and means itself without having a meaning. I count the people in the distance I can see from my window in sentence sixty-seven. In sentence sixty-eight the breeze has a sweet smell. In sentence sixty-nine, it turns the last week of May in the year 2008. Sentence seventy concerns the lack of what I wanted, in my own mind, to be saying. In sentence seventy-one I'm going so far as to ask you if you can see this, how much of what I thought lay before me remained in the distance. In sentence seventy-two there is a hill there. In sentence seventy-three we see flowers open their faces and then black snakes slide down the face of the hill. In sentence seventy-four there is still nothing. In sentence seventy-five the moon changes place with the sun. In sentence seventy-six this takes place again, only now it is day. In sentence seventy-seven it is still day. In sentence seventy-eight it is still day. Why do you think about tragedy, sentence seventy-nine wants to know, since it is the least likely thing to happen. Sentence eighty will eventually come to me and want to know what I am doing with myself. Sentence eighty-one reminds me to expect this question. In sentence eighty-two something changes. I stay up two nights running and in the morning the sidewalk seems to rise up and meet my feet underneath my feet. Sentence eighty-four contains the question, didn't you already know that this would start to happen. Sentence eighty-five agrees. When I start to read sentence eighty-six I discover it contains the words, It is also true that what you said could be. For this reason, sentence eighty-seven is a sentence about why there are certainly points of correspondence between what we expect to be the case and what is. Sentence eighty-eight proclaims it feels the excitement and not the work. Sentence eighty-nine takes action without saying anything first. In sentence ninety I cover my eyes. In sentence ninety-one I uncover my eyes so that I can look again. In sentence ninety-two I cover them again. Now I am speaking to you. Now I am speaking to you. Say the words after me just as I say them. What it means to live is the subject of sentence ninety-six. You are moving out of earshot now. We are not going to miss each other. You have an excellent memory. Please never forget I was the one who told you that