536 Philosophy poems

It is not the angel riding a goat, trying to make him go. It does no work with refusal or guilt, which loves only its contorted self. But fancies instead my terrier’s long pink tongue, how it teases out the bone’s marrow, tasting with all its muscle. The angel is silver, but so is the goat and the box on which they perch, a Victorian gesture in the mansion where I spent the fall. They have followed me home, their permanent shine presuming, while around me, everything withered, slowly froze, and began its turn toward white. The snow is nothing but a great emptiness, and I’m tired of trying to find a secret there. But look—one leaf skittering across the glazed surface catches its stem to stand upright, the shape of a hand waving.

Who is quitting dogs today? Making them their sister? Who is stretched out by a lamppost sibling? Illuminated by ransom’s note? I was oblivious to pettiness until I saw its first handle: obey ignorance. Stomach decisiveness. By that, this decision . . . no decision. Let it be to gain all it can in one fetter . . . but if it be life, let it attempt a failed recognition. Let its thinker be the failure. My thinker is failure, and I want to teach it how to move in this world. Do you be or live? To any the other wants. To both these words, I fail to be. When I am, but when not . . . It is, as if alive.

1. At the Walking Dunes, Eastern Long Island That a bent piece of straw made a circle in the sand. That it represents the true direction of the wind. Beach grass, tousled phragmite. Bone-white dishes, scoops and bowls, glaring without seeing. An accordion of creases on the downhill, sand drapery. The cranberry bushes biting down to survive. And the wind’s needlework athwart the eyeless Atlantic. And the earless roaring in the shape of a sphere. A baritone wind, tuned to the breath of the clouds. Pushing sand that made a hilly prison of time. For wind and water both move inland. Abrading scrub — the stunted, the dwarfed, the bantam. A fine sandpaper, an eraser as wide as the horizon. Itself made of galaxies, billions against the grain. Sand: the mortal infinitude of a single rock. 2. Walking in the Drowning Forest Pitch pine, thirty-five-foot oaks to their necks in sand. That the ocean signals the lighthouse. Gull feathers call to the fox that left them behind. Impressions of deer feet, dog feet and gull claws. The piping plover in seclusion. Somewhere the blind owl to be healed at sunset. Here is artistry beyond self-flattery. A rootworks wiser than the ball of yarn we call the brain. A mindless, eyeless, earless skin-sense. To which the crab comes sideways. With which the sunken ship shares its secrets. From which no harness can protect one, nor anchor fix one. He knows, who has paddled an hour with one oar. He knows, who has worn the whitecaps. Who has slipped from the ferry or leaped from the bridge. To be spoken of, though no one knows.

“A equals X,” says Mister One. “A equals B,” says Mister Two. “A equals nothing under the sun But A,” says Mister Three. A few Applaud; some wipe their eyes; Some linger in the shade to see One and Two in neat disguise Decapitating Mister Three. “This age is not entirely bad.” It’s bad enough, God knows, but you Should know Elizabethans had Sweeneys and Mrs. Porters too. The past goes down and disappears, The present stumbles home to bed, The future stretches out in years That no one knows, and you’ll be dead.

for Robert Payne Great Alexander sailing was from his true course turned By a young wind from a cloud in Asia moving Like a most recognizable most silvery woman; Tall Alexander to the island came. The small breeze blew behind his turning head. He walked the foam of ripples into this scene. The trunk of the speaking tree looks like a tree-trunk Until you look again.     Then people and animals Are ripening on the branches;     the broad leaves Are leaves;     pale horses, sharp fine foxes Blossom;     the red rabbit falls Ready and running.     The trunk coils, turns, Snakes, fishes.     Now the ripe people fall and run, Three of them in their shore-dance, flames that stand Where reeds are creatures and the foam is flame. Stiff Alexander stands.     He cannot turn. But he is free to turn : this is the speaking tree, It calls your name.     It tells us what we mean.

In the coolness here I care Not for the down-pressed noises overhead, I hear in my pearly bone the wear Of marble under the rain; nothing is truly dead, There is only the wearing away, The changing of means. Nor eyes I have To tell how in the summer the mourning dove Rocks on the hemlock’s arm, nor ears to rend The sad regretful mind With the call of the horned lark. I lie so still that the earth around me Shakes with the weight of day; I do not mind if the vase Holds decomposed cut flowers, or if they send One of their kind to tidy up. Such play I have no memories of, Nor of the fire-bush flowers, or the bark Of the rough pine where the crows With their great haw and flap Circle in kinned excitement when a wind blows. I am kin with none of these, Nor even wed to the yellowing silk that splits; My sensitive bones, which dreaded, As all the living do, the dead, Wait for some unappointed pattern. The wits Of countless centuries dry in my skull and overhead I do not heed the first rain out of winter, Nor do I care what they have planted. At my center The bone glistens; of wondrous bones I am made; And alone shine in a phosphorous glow, So, in this little plot where I am laid.

(from As You Like It , spoken by Jaques) All the world’s a stage,

(from Hamlet , spoken by Hamlet) To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep, No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub: For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause—there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of th'unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pitch and moment With this regard their currents turn awry And lose the name of action.

(from Macbeth , spoken by Macbeth) Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

Suffer as in allow. List as in want. Listless as in transcending desire, or not rising to greet it. To list is to lean, dangerously, to one side. Have you forgotten? Spent as in exhausted.