536 Philosophy poems

November wind. The feeling of knowing something before you said it, all over everything. As in,shadow take me into the side of the mountain. As in,open up the earth and get inside. Leaving doesn't mean much. Arriving means everything, how you came to be where you were, even if later it will hurt to think of it. And the forgotten, aren't they always the most remembered elsewhere, before they perish, when someone has their eye on them, and later when the shrines are made with local flowers and icons of heroes, roses in midsummer, angels on winter wings? I'll leave your local customs to your own imagination. Leaving, though, always a kind of unfolding of the act of staying. Last night I knew it was the East wind not asking for me arriving because the door to the kitchen blew open, last night, at the edge of sleep, like someone using only half the alphabet. The book about Brecht separating at the seam because my reading had been the last one it could take before breaking into Exile and After, California in the middle, with the playwright in short sleeves, bored on the PCH, looking at the dramatic cliff work with a friend who meant well, driving, arriving at the slumlord dockyards saying at last scenery. You must forgive me or forgive the book for breaking. It was tired, you see it was a paperback, from the time people actually wanted ones like that, thought books like that should be held in hands on beaches or in cars or in cafes. Sleepy, almost sleepy, falling asleep, awake, now, I admit it, I was completely awake, listening to the wind, which I cannot defend. Nothing in the mind but that reckless pleasure and somewhere in the book Brecht saying the truth is concrete

one should never play martyr there are martyrs beyond you one should never argue apocalypse without your whole lifetime before you, which is impossible Pushkin said, ‘my sadness is luminous’—this is his reason Ralph flew to Bristol to see her she said, ‘You’re not in touch with Eternity’ he said, ‘Gee, that’s true,’ then later sent a telegram, ‘meet me in Jerusalem,’ since he was going

Why did the moth fly into the flame? Was it for the same reason That Achilles died young? Who gets more fun out of sex, The man or the woman? (Be sure to explain how you can tell.) Which is more real to you, heaven or hell? Why do sinners’ ways prosper? What causes the death of love— The love of death? Did Adam and Eve have a choice? Did the Virgin Mary? What are we afraid of, anyway? Even agnostics have the right to say “thank god,” don’t they? Looking at these dancing atoms, shall I say I saw a ring Of pure and endless light? Or did I dream the whole thing? Whom shall I say is calling? Are you in if it’s your wife? Are you willing to relocate? Do you like your life? What makes this night different from all other nights? Would you say it’s your fate to be always, Without exception, five minutes late? If you arrived At 9:10, would the ceremony have started at 9:05 Though it had been scheduled for 9:15? As you walk down The aisle, and the others rivet their attention to you, Do you ask yourself what you’re going to do, As though it mattered, as if you knew?

Where there’s smoke there are mirrors and a dry ice machine, industrial quality fans. If I’ve learned anything about the present moment • But who doesn’t love a flame, the way one leaps into being full-fledged, then leans over to chat • Already the light is retrospective, sourceless, is losing itself though the trees are clearly limned.

Once there lived in the ancient city of Afkar two learned men who hated and belittled each other’s learning.  For one of them denied the existence of the gods and the other was a believer. One day the two met in the marketplace, and amidst their followers they began to dispute and to argue about the existence or the non-existence of the gods.  And after hours of contention they parted. That evening the unbeliever went to the temple and prostrated himself before the altar and prayed the gods to forgive his wayward past. And the same hour the other learned man, he who had upheld the gods, burned his sacred books.  For he had become an unbeliever.

Two old crows sat on a fence rail. Two old crows sat on a fence rail, Thinking of effect and cause, Of weeds and flowers, And nature's laws. One of them muttered, one of them stuttered, One of them stuttered, one of them muttered. Each of them thought far more than he uttered. One crow asked the other crow a riddle. One crow asked the other crow a riddle: The muttering crow Asked the stuttering crow, “Why does a bee have a sword to his fiddle? Why does a bee have a sword to his fiddle?” “Bee-cause,” said the other crow, “Bee-cause, B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause.” Just then a bee flew close to their rail:— “Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz             zzzzzzzzz             zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ZZZZZZZZ.” And those two black crows Turned pale, And away those crows did sail. Why? B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause. B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause. “Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz             zzzzzzzzz             zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ZZZZZZZZ.”

Re- demption comes & redemp- tion goes but trans- ience is here for- ever.

A little candlewax on the thumbnail, liquid at first, slipping, then stalled to an ice-hood. Another layer, another, and the child lies back, his thumb a hummock, his small knuckle buckled with cracks. No snow yet, but the last white meadows of switchwort and saxifrage mimic it. Already the bears brush back through the dwarf willows—Hubbart Point, Cape Henrietta Maria, the bay's deep arc flattening, lessening as land extends through the fast-ice and the seam of open leads stretches, withdraws. They have come for the pack floes, for the slow rafting. And repeat on their white faces, the boy thinks, the low strokes of the borealis: violet mouths, madder blue at the eyelids. Perhaps he will walk to the shoreline—no shore, of course, just miles of land-fast ice stretched over water, stretched out to water, the line where each begins a filament, a vapor. By then the bears will be sailors, or, far to the north, stalled in their waxy sleep. He yawns, looks down at his slipper, his floormat of braided fleece. By then the lights will be thicker, greens and magentas flashing, rolling in at times like fog.To go where nothing lives. He turns, settles. To extend a little breath out over that ice—the white, cumbersome bodies migrating in reverse with the others, dragging between them a lifeline, plump and intricate, like a net, like purse seiners dragging a cork net, its great arc spiraling, tighter, tighter, now green in those lights, now blue, now pink as the boy's ear, where all night a line of cold traces the rim, the lobe, circles down, chills, and recedes.

needed          explanation because of the mystic nature        of the theory and our reliance          on collective belief I could not visualize the end the tools that paved the way broke the body the foundation the exact copy of the real our surfaces were covered our surfaces are all covered actual hands appear but then there is writing in the cave       we were deeply impressed as in addicted to results oh and dedication training     the idea of loss of life in our work we call this emotion how a poem enters into the world there is nothing wrong with the instrument as here I would raise my voice but the human being and the world cannot be equated aside from the question of whether or not we are alone and other approaches to nothingness (the term “subject”)(the term “only”) also opinion and annihilation (the body’s minutest sensation of time) (the world, it is true, has not yet been destroyed) intensification      void we are amazed uselessness is the last form love takes so liquid till the forgone conclusion here we are, the forgone conclusion so many messages transmitted they will never acquire meaning do you remember          my love my archive touch me (here) give birth to       a single idea touch where it does not lead to war show me    exact spot climb the stairs lie on the bed have faith nerves wearing only moonlight lie down lie still patrol yr cage be a phenomenon at the bottom below the word intention, lick past it rip     years find the burning matter love allows it (I think) push past the freedom (smoke) push past     intelligence (smoke) whelm      sprawl (favorite city)   (god’s tiny voices) hand over mouth let light arrive let the past strike us and go drift        undo if it please the dawn lean down say      hurt      undo in your mouth be pleased where does it say where does it say this is the mother tongue there is in my mouth a ladder climb down presence of world impassable       gap pass I am beside myself you are inside me       as history We exist         Meet me

we all got tickets to The Truth finally we thought finally when the curtain fell away our indrawn breaths could be heard even in the next theater even the gasp of the mime who had slipped in among us a loud whushing like reams of litter whirling upward in a gale hands shot to mouths and mouths fell open I couldn’t say within how many seconds all our minds shut some slamming others just a click like 300 parallel rows of tipped dominoes a racket of almost unison believe me we wouldn’t have resisted anything but the truth so instantly and universally yet we sat there and waited for something else which you could say we also got if you count the mime’s unpleasant remark so she wasn’t even a real mime probably part of what was clearly just a performance