Andrew Joron

Full the blow to a gong —gone blind with the sight of white Silk, O milk of my reason— sun reseen in My mad mad mirror. Gibbous Sense Less science: the Wish-apparition of a perfect fact. As thought, the war Of one upon one. Half Half a mind almost mine. Whole fragment, I am A being from another word. Crescent Bow bent back—to what release? My lone line, the join of all I am not. A minor truth betrays A major one— A lore for the lyre. For it is written:liar with a why. New Calling all coincidence, I will Deem the dark my day. Yet—if I say I am lying, I am lying To you now. O zero raised to zero—I am lying with you now.

1. Cogs & cogs that cannot turn to recognitions: such dogs in the dark noonday! As if the tongue told & tolled Among the melancholic arcades. Where the moods advance toward the modes. Time to try the knot, the Not Or to be caught Forever in nerve-traceries of Beauty . . . Unstrung, the structure is sound. 2. Detour to far fires. To be counted missing . . . in a toroidal space That mimics the shape of its container, speech. The passive of, the possessive of— Measureless intent,blue almost black, the picture below the voice. Less a name than a substance Coming to stillness, star-inhabited. Less a substance than a sigh. 3. Awaited, thou,unawaited. Divided here. O then Opened as earthen ring, cave-recorded. A mazed interior. Self-similar aisles of isles, pouring form from form. Lastness as device. Aligned as measurements (letters)— as sensitive, all-too-sensitive compass needles forever seeking the frozen pole, the zero. Caption: “An end-of-century sailing ship,Delirium held fast in sheets of ice.” 4. No atmosphere is sufficient. An embryo in the brain is not yet breathing. There, the labor Of the living rock, where an ache, or bruise-ember will be discovered. Scored for Theremin, or permanently scarred. Where shadows point:Mad lengthening to made, as unmade scaffolding. Thus, repetition, resisted is the register of thought. Now here, even as staves are falling, another story —intervallic—cannot be told—that is, besieged As the heart encaged in bone. The animal calls long long, disconsolate In its hollow mountain. 5. Neither nor nor neither, time builds Its twelve tones between round&ruined. —as the roots of the sunflower, arrayed over earthlight. Routes unreturning / term without terminus. Riding as reading Migrates underground. Writing as the righting Of fallen angles, of tangles of Accident— arrives riven, a body never to be / surveyed. Abandoned in a wintry field, the sum of its travels —its hunting the same as its haunting.

The faster I travel the slower the world dies Inside the head of a flower The sun’s a swinging pendulum —all Radiance is progress Of a pre-existent stillness Stone, inspired To fluency curves thought toward the drinking of Its shadow grail: grille: grid The lines recursive to impalement one point alone sings cumulative, crowding negativity My apparitions distorted by star-tides Fail to approximate zero Where sensation’s tip Crumbles to ash Another Radio-profile turns, edged with dark cries objects unfounded of medieval prophecy The heavens too grow cold

The orbiting reflector Turns night into day: petals ping Accelerated workers swarm into the plaza A blur on the soul’s dead instrument Everywhere, windows are blanked To the same newsreel I alone Inhabit a mockup of the early nineteenth century I, the great idealist who confesses On the first page of his diary:Father! There are no living atoms & the diary answers:Identity Is that Which is eaten from within Another man is partially assembled On the table Another module Unshrouded, revolves in sunlight filtered through noise A simulated victory Crawls like a glove Animated by music