1269 Arts and sciences poems

Hail native language, that by sinews weak Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak, And mad'st imperfect words with childish trips, Half unpronounc'd, slide through my infant lips, Driving dumb Silence from the portal door, Where he had mutely sate two years before: Here I salute thee and thy pardon ask, That now I use thee in my latter task: Small loss it is that thence can come unto thee, I know my tongue but little grace can do thee: Thou needst not be ambitious to be first, Believe me I have thither pack'd the worst: And, if it happen as I did forecast, The daintest dishes shall be serv'd up last. I pray thee then deny me not thy aid For this same small neglect that I have made: But haste thee straight to do me once a pleasure, And from thy wardrobe bring thy chiefest treasure; Not those new-fangled toys, and trimming slight Which takes our late fantastics with delight, But cull those richest robes, and gay'st attire Which deepest spirits, and choicest wits desire. I have some naked thoughts that rove about And loudly knock to have their passage out; And weary of their place do only stay Till thou hast deck'd them in thy best array; That so they may without suspect or fears Fly swiftly to this fair assembly's ears. Yet I had rather, if I were to choose, Thy service in some graver subject use, Such as may make thee search thy coffers round, Before thou clothe my fancy in fit sound: Such where the deep transported mind may soar Above the wheeling poles, and at heav'n's door Look in, and see each blissful deity How he before the thunderous throne doth lie, Listening to what unshorn Apollo sings To th'touch of golden wires, while Hebe brings Immortal nectar to her kingly sire; Then passing through the spheres of watchful fire, And misty regions of wide air next under, And hills of snow and lofts of piled thunder, May tell at length how green-ey'd Neptune raves, In heav'n's defiance mustering all his waves; Then sing of secret things that came to pass When beldam Nature in her cradle was; And last of kings and queens and heroes old, Such as the wise Demodocus once told In solemn songs at king Alcinous' feast, While sad Ulysses' soul and all the rest Are held with his melodious harmony In willing chains and sweet captivity.

1 Is this writing mine Whose name is this Did I underline What I was to miss? 2 An upheaval of leaves Enlightens the tree Rooted it receives Gusts on a spree 3 Beauty makes me sad Makes me grieve I see what I must leave 4 Scaffold, gallows Do whose will Who hallows wood To build, kill 5 Blind man, anvil No hammer strikes Your eyes are spikes

An idea is sometimes sweetened by refusing to be expressed, if it attends, solicitously, to this failure, and urges us on to discover the true impediment to its adaptation. In that spirit, and bearing that intention within us, we note here, as elsewhere, there are generally three alternative courses. The first is simply to accept without question an explanation someone in our proximity, and whom we know, proffers and then elects to modify out of concern that small details are escaping to set up camp opposite what is being said. The second is to surrender one’s reluctance to withdraw from the presence of an unsolved problem by grabbing crudely at vacant affirmations that nothing further need be done, that everything to be accomplished was accomplished well before current advocates approached the threshold, coaxed forward by the desire to indulge their own vanity. The third is to remain absolutely uncommitted to any specific course, and to insist that the process begin anew each time, contending that no information will ever be adequate to the task of judgment, that the requirements, as they evolve, will make each element moot, or at a minimum place the likelihood of resolution in ever greater doubt over time, with the paradoxical effect that the impulse to continue is not thereby diminished, only channeled into a narrower, more determined form. Although no benefits are likely to accrue from this last course, it’s unquestionably the one most often followed, owing perhaps to people’s need to test the strength of a membrane designed to repel assault, or their perennial enchantment with kaleidoscopic complications spreading over the earth, as time walks through the sky.

I can’t keep my eyes off the poet’s wife’s legs—they’re so much more beautiful than anything he might be saying, though I’m no longer in a position really to judge, having stopped listening some time ago. He’s from the Iowa Writers Workshop and can therefore get along fine without my attention. He started in reading poems about his childhood— barns, cornsnakes, gradeschool, flowers, that sort of stuff—the loss of innocence he keeps talking about between poems, which I can relate to, especially under these circumstances. Now he’s on to science, a poem about hydrogen, I think, he’s trying to imagine himself turning into hydrogen. Maybe he’ll succeed. I’m imagining myself sliding up his wife’s fluid, rhythmic, lusciously curved, black- stockinged legs, imagining them arched around my shoulders, wrapped around my back. My God, why doesn’t he write poems about her! He will, no doubt, once she leaves him, leaves him for another poet, perhaps, the observant, uninnocent one, who knows a poem when it sits down in a room with him.

Mark the first page of the book with a red marker. For, in the beginning, the wound is invisible. - Reb Alcé "What is going on behind this door?" "A book is shedding its leaves." "What is the story of the book?" "Becoming aware of a scream." "I saw rabbis go in." "They are privileged readers. They come in small groups to give us their comments." "Have they read the book?" "They are reading it." "Did they happen by for the fun of it?" "They foresaw the book. They are prepared to encounter it." "Do they know the characters?" "They know our martyrs." "Where is the book set?" "In the book." "Who are you?" "I am the keeper of the house." "Where do you come from?" "I have wandered." "Is Yukel your friend?" "I am like Yukel." "What is your lot?" "To open the book." "Are you in the book?" "My place is at the threshold." "What have you tried to learn?" "I sometimes stop on the road to the sources and question the signs, the world of my ancestors." "You examine recaptured words." "The nights and mornings of the syllables which are mine, yes." "Your mind is wandering." "I have been wandering for two thousand years." "I have trouble following you." "I, too, have often tried to give up." "Do we have a tale here?" "My story has been told so many times." "What is your story?" "Ours, insofar as it is absent." "I do not understand." "Speaking tortures me." "Where are you?" "In what I say." "What is your truth?" "What lacerates me." "And your salvation?" "Forgetting what I said." "May I come in? It is getting dark." "In each word there burns a wick." "May I come in? It is getting dark around my soul." "It is dark around me, too." "What can you do for me?" "Your share of luck is in yourself." "Writing for the sake of writing does nothing but show contempt." "Man is a written bond and place." "I hate what is said in place I have left behind." "You trade in the future, which is immediately translated. What you have left is you without you." "You oppose me to myself. How could I ever win this fight?" "Defeat is the price agreed on." "You are a Jew, and you talk like one." "The four letters JUIF which designate my origin are your four fingers. You can use your thumb to crush me." "You are a Jew, and you talk like one. But I am cold. It is dark. Let me come into the house." "There is a lamp on my table. And the house is in the book." "So I will live in the house after all." "You will follow the book, whose every page is an abyss where the wing shines with the name."

this little phase keeps on the same way without variety jazz and compromise making blue snow grow at the windows mohair fumes clog my throat like cats flames pounce without burning shadows gather in parkas at my back turn so i can see your face stand where i can see you man should someone phone i will tell whoever it is i cannot escape this night even saxophones do not dry light the brown sweat terror in white doorways under multicolored covers there is no way to sleep with the phone falling off the hook the blaring beep of warnings do not leave your house do not stay home this is the contradiction of when i live even fanfares and flourishes do not announce a truce with our personal assailants without variety blue dust blood traces in floor wax black fog and nappy lint colorless wax spreads broad tears across all the windows some permanent weather happened to this building some misplaced coal mine had its disaster here and i am alive inside

Ventriloquy is the mother tongue. Can you colonize rejection by phrasing your request, “Me want?” Song: “I’m not a baby. Wa, Wa, Wa. I’m not a baby. Wa, Wa, Wa. I’m crazy like you.” The “you” in the heart of molecule and ridicule. Marks resembling the holes in dead leaves define the thing (moth wing). That flutter of indifference, feigned? But if lapses are the dens strategy aims to conceal, then you don’t know what you’re asking.

for Andrew Joron the desire to show is destruction in lessons forgot before learned no shrunken heads hang by wires no mourning songs of half-remembered shutters open the width of an eyelash it is enough for vision to run its finger along, for access to steal from forbidden shores the still-cold beams of night and pack them in ice but a child couldn’t live here nonetheless in the morning is come a bell that summons a fortune that reads she will soon cross the water and the intended instructions which may not florish after all she leaves a painting outside her room and in the morning it’s gone and not one word is spoke between them but her father carries it to his grave the desire to show is destruction and we are not hung with skins we must follow internal echoes commit ourselves to memory

If I speak for the dead, I must leave this animal of my body, I must write the same poem over and over, for an empty page is the white flag of their surrender. If I speak for them, I must walk on the edge of myself, I must live as a blind man who runs through rooms without touching the furniture. Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking “What year is it?” I can dance in my sleep and laugh in front of the mirror. Even sleep is a prayer, Lord, I will praise your madness, and in a language not mine, speak of music that wakes us, music in which we move. For whatever I say is a kind of petition, and the darkest days must I praise.

Thou ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain, Who after birth didst by my side remain, Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true, Who thee abroad, expos’d to publick view, Made thee in raggs, halting to th’ press to trudge, Where errors were not lessened (all may judg). At thy return my blushing was not small, My rambling brat (in print) should mother call, I cast thee by as one unfit for light, Thy Visage was so irksome in my sight; Yet being mine own, at length affection would Thy blemishes amend, if so I could: I wash’d thy face, but more defects I saw, And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw. I stretched thy joynts to make thee even feet, Yet still thou run’st more hobling then is meet; In better dress to trim thee was my mind, But nought save home-spun Cloth, i’ th’ house I find. In this array ’mongst Vulgars mayst thou roam. In Criticks hands, beware thou dost not come; And take thy way where yet thou art not known, If for thy Father askt, say, thou hadst none: And for thy Mother, she alas is poor, Which caus’d her thus to send thee out of door.