536 Philosophy poems

Some things become such a part of us that we forget them. • I want because of what I wanted, and what I wanted, I wouldn’t want again. • The passing of a soul is light, extremely light, almost silence. • There are pains that have lost their memory and don’t remember why they are painful. • Convince me, but without convictions. Convictions no longer convince me. • We don’t forgive being as we are. • At the last moment, my whole life will last a moment. • Man is a thing children learn. A childish thing. • Don’t speak to me. I want to be with you. • There are those fallen who don’t get up so as not to fall again. • The dream that doesn’t feed on dream vanishes.

The social instincts ... naturally lead to the golden rule. —CHARLES DARWIN, The Descent of Man 1 Holding her steady, into the pitch and roll, in raw Midwestern hands ten thousand tons of winter wheat for the fall of Rome, still swallowing the hunger of the war: the binnacle glows like an open fire, east-southeast and steady, Anderssen, the Viking mate, belaboring me for contraband, my little book of Einstein, that “Commie Jew.” (So much for the social instincts, pacifism, humanism, the frail and noble causes.) I speak my piece for western civ: light bends ... stars warp ... mass converts ... “Pipe dreams,” says the Dane, “pipe dreams.” “Well, mate, remember, those Jewish dreams made nightmares out of Hiroshima, and blew us out of uniform, alive.” He stomps down off the bridge; some day he’ll fire me off his rusty liberty: I read too much. The ocean tugs and wrestles with ten thousand deadweight tons of charity, trembling on degrees and minutes. Anderssen steams back in with coffee, to contest the stars with Einstein, full ahead. We haven’t come to Darwin. 2 Freezing on the flying bridge, staring at the night for nothing, running lights of freighters lost in a blur of blowing snow, we hold on through the midnight watch, waiting out the bells. With Einstein in our wake, the tricks are easier: liberty churns on, ten knots an hour, toward Rome. One starry night we ride at last with Darwin on the Beagle: endless ocean, sea sickness, revelations of Toxodon and Megalonyx—a voyage old as the Eocene, the watery death of Genesis. The going gets rough again, the threat of all those bones churning the heavy swells: Anderssen, a true believer, skeptical, and Darwin trapped in a savage earthquake, the heave of coastal strata conjuring the wreck of England, lofty houses gone, government in chaos, violence and pillage through the land, and afterward, fossils gleaming white along the raw ridges. “Limeys.” Anderssen puts his benediction to empire: “Stupid Limeys.” After that we breathe a bit and watch the stars and tell sad stories of the death of tribes, the bones, the countless bones: we talk about the war, we talk about extinction. 3 Okinawa, Iwo Jima: slouching toward Tokyo, the only good Jap is a dead Jap. We must get the bomb, Einstein writes to F.D.R., waking from the dreams of peace, the noble causes: get it first, before the Nazis do. (The only good Nazi is an extinct Nazi.) At the death of Hiroshima, all day long we celebrate extinction, chugalugging free beer down at the px , teen- age kids in khaki puking pints of three-point-two in honor of the fire: no more island-hopping now to the murderous heart of empire. Later, in the luxury of peace, the bad dreams come. “Certainly,” Darwin broods, “no fact in the long history of the world is so startling as the wide and repeated extermination of its inhabitants.” 4 Off somewhere to starboard, the Canaries, Palma, Tenerife: sunrise backlights the rugged peaks, as Darwin, twenty-two years old, gazes at the clouds along the foothills. Longitudes ease westward; it’s my birthday: twenty-two years old as Tenerife falls into the sunset, I’m as greedy for the old world as Darwin for the new, Bahia, Desire, the palms and crimson flowers of the Mediterranean, clear water dancing with mines. Ahead of us a tanker burns; the war will never end. 5 “You talk a lot,” says the melancholy Dane. “You sure you’re not Jewish yourself? You got a funny name.” “Well, mate, I’m pure Celtic on one side, pure Orphan on the other: therefore half of anything at all—Jewish, Danish, what you will: a problem, isn’t it, for Hitler, say, or the Klan, or even Gregor Mendel, sweating out the summer in his pea patch?” The fact is, I know those ancestors floating through my sleep: an animal that breathed water, had a great swimming tail, an imperfect skull, undoubtedly hermaphrodite

As others or ourselves let’s say—furtive, then, inconsequent and sad— or on the edge of thought, perhaps, or into some predictable meandering, the outward accelerations of water against its shore dissipating into erosions, cuts and counter-cuts, remembered as landscape, the convenient certainties of an abandoned past. Is it tree or treeline or the massing of leaves against the sky or color freed from shadow or something of color deepening against shade, the sensible bluff that heaves above the bluff’s presumed insensible marl? River, again, always enclosed by its own turnings, its own turnings overgrown.

When those are the walkative stars That talked to the immediate prisoners themselves When those are the talkative stars That walked along the narrow sledge pathways Yet those are lines to another star That were to have been led for changelings Around a dark dreambox of another kind That houses our more talkative stars

Walking across a field we are focused on at this time now, Judd. We are focusing on the act of walking across a field. We will focus our attention on this gesture of walking. We will act in the manner of moving our legs forward. We will press our heels to the grass while we are in the process of movement and we will extend our toes forward. We will bend our knees as the soles of our feet press against the grass. As our knees bend we will lift our opposite foot at the heel and we will push our bent leg forward across space. Our opposite leg will exist in space, bent at a ninety-degree angle, until it drops and our heel touches the grass first followed by the soles of our feet and lastly followed by our toes. At which point the heel of our opposite foot will lift and it will shift our point of balance. We will lift that heel and bend our legs. As we lift our opposite leg at a ninety-degree angle so that the top surfaces of our thighs are parallel to both the sky and the ground, we will shift our point of balance from the vertical and closer to a horizontal. We will shift our point of balance forward until our feet become pressed to the ground. At which point we will lift the heel of our opposite leg and draw our knee upward. We will focus our attention on neither where we are walking from, or to, at this time, but on the act of walking. There are many features to this. However we are focused on walking across a field at this time. We will focus our attention on this manner of walking. On neither speed nor duration, but on this gesture of walking across a field. Especially on this day with clouds. Whether we are walking in unison, it does not matter. And we will focus our attention on neither how long we have been walking nor how long it will continue, but on continuing this gesture in the manner of walking. We will focus on the way that it feels to be somewhat grounded despite walking steadily forward. We will focus on the way in which we are walking steadily forward. We will focus on the position of walking forward and its implications. We will focus on this position while we are walking. Whether we are walking in unison, it does not matter. We are focusing on walking across a field at this time now. We will focus on the manner in which we turn our heads periodically from side to side in discussion. We will focus our attention on the manner in which we have been speaking and the variations as to this. As to the manner, it does not matter, but rather its presence while we are focused on the act of walking across a field. In the manner of walking across a field now, we are walking in a direction forward while turning our heads at times toward each other. We will focus on this walking gesture and the expanse that surrounds our movement. We will focus on its many qualities. We will focus on its many qualities while walking across a field. We will focus on relation within this gesture of walking across a field. We will focus on this movement forward as we are walking across a field in relation. Whether we are walking in unison, it does not matter. With relation to fields, it is the movement that is most important.

walking person who has sky flowing–by one who beside is as if being backward by walking in life of people? but of one being 'defense- less' by the huge–is elating which is time. 'I was by a bigger bird - inside' - walking walking by (someone with the sky flowing) disturbed by being– by it– (compared by being–to past event: man seeing red tail hawk sit- ting in the city beside smaller bird disturbed calling)–(one walking by someone)–beside is 'embarrassing as being action' in one– (from)(its)(in the) present. 'embarrassed' is being elated simply here (as:) with one.

In order to perfect all readers the statements should be carved on rock walls, on cave walls, and on the side of pillars so the charm of their instruction can affect the mountain climbers near the cliffs, the plainsmen near the pillars, and the city people near the caves they go to on vacations. The statements should, and in a fair script, spell out the right text and gloss of the Philosopher’s jocular remark. Text: “Honesty is the best policy.” Gloss: “He means not ‘best’ but ‘policy,’ (this is the joke of it) whereas in fact Honesty is Honesty, Best is Best, and Policy is Policy, the three terms being not related, but here loosely allied. What is more important is that ‘is’ is, but the rocklike truth of the text resides in the ‘the’. The ‘the’ is The. By this means the amusing sage has raised or caused to be raised the triple standard in stone: the single is too simple for life, the double is mere degrading hypocrisy, but the third combines the first two in a possible way, and contributes something unsayable of its own: this is the pit, nut, seed, or stone of the fruit when the fruit has been digested: It is good to do good for the wrong reason, better to do good for the good reason, and best of all to do good good: i.e. when the doer and doee and whatever passes between them are beyond all words like ‘grace’ or ‘anagogic insight,’ or definitions like ‘particular instance of a hoped-at-law,’ and which the rocks alone can convey. This is the real reason for the rock walls, the cave walls and pillars, and not the base desires for permanence and display that the teacher’s conceit suggests.” That is the end of the statements, but, in order to go on a way after the end so as to make up for having begun after the beginning, and thus to come around to it in order to include the whole thing, add: “In some places the poignant slogan, ‘Morality is a bad joke like everything else,’ may be written or not, granted that space exists for the vulgar remarks, the dates, initials and hearts of lovers, and all other graffiti of the prisoners of this world.”

Arnica, eyebright, the draft from the well with the star-die on top, in the Hütte, written in the book —whose name did it record before mine?—, in this book the line about a hope, today, for a thinker's word to come, in the heart, forest sward, unleveled, orchis and orchis, singly, raw exchanges, later, while driving, clearly, he who drives us, the mensch, he also hears it, the half- trod log- trails on the highmoor, humidity, much.

(1) Nothing that exists can be temporal; still I come to lay this stick upon these altars, those three definitions of sun, the border and thick measure of lost perfection. Sun must acknowledge this state, an iconic message, abrupt invention of death; we shall call it an accomplishment, or a causal relation. The mask measures my intent on a patch of earth, a spent measure, a return, that red unruly seat of the dead. (2) Could the Cusan speak of love as a return, a plentitude of absence, an imprecise count of the dark from which he would always turn? The binukedine know how to entice the expansive energy flowing from grace, an absolute measure, a stellar device. I would propose a failed sun, a sacrifice that spins an ambiguous body in time, in trust to a sacred field, death's other price. Call this, too, an intrinsic order, a rhyme of resuscitated bodies, pure, sublime in their perturbative intent, a concern of rhythms and designs set upon an urn. (3) This must be what is the case, nani in the manifold, dannu, milestone, the embrace of albarga mask, the cold design the solstice will prove. Nothing under law will hold. What established light will move or change the structure of light, light an order to disprove? Speak of the possible mask, of its finite correlation to love, the logical slight derivation and mark of corrupted space, that fugitive event that will leave no trace. (4) Bogged in a bone order, syntax and substance of the passing world, I place my duge in the fragile arms of silence. So much for the quick embrace of the ceasing instant, the chaste argument only the dead can efface. Say that I have written my absolute descent and stable transformation through a sounding tone to one that now is spent. Praise this instant collation, paradox and migration of souls without assurance or the due gift of distance.

Two men share one tooth. From one tooth the men predict the world. Thank you! or we would not exist. Two men and one tooth is not a problem. One man is wide and one man is sober. Sometimes the men are the same. Little tooth is the light of the orchard. From it all things are made up. Once the two men lost the tooth and every one disappeared. No one was angry because no one was there. The men found the tooth when the tooth started laughing. The men said what is that noise and the world came back on. They told the tooth that’s not funny but it was very funny. One man swallowed the tooth and put on all the sad knowledge. He wanted to punish the tooth but the tooth punished him. It lasted three hours and then he threw up. The two men live in a cave with bay windows. To be in love is so solemn think the two men once a year. The tooth never thinks any thing. It is the tooth of a goat.