536 Philosophy poems

This strange thing must have crept Right out of hell. It resembles a bird’s foot Worn around the cannibal’s neck. As you hold it in your hand, As you stab with it into a piece of meat, It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird: Its head which like your fist Is large, bald, beakless, and blind.

The wind blows east, the wind blows west, And the frost falls and the rain: A weary heart went thankful to rest, And must rise to toil again, ’gain, And must rise to toil again. The wind blows east, the wind blows west, And there comes good luck and bad; The thriftiest man is the cheerfulest; ’Tis a thriftless thing to be sad, sad, ’Tis a thriftless thing to be sad. The wind blows east, the wind blows west; Ye shall know a tree by its fruit: This world, they say, is worst to the best;— But a dastard has evil to boot, boot, But a dastard has evil to boot. The wind blows east, the wind blows west; What skills it to mourn or to talk? A journey I have, and far ere I rest; I must bundle my wallets and walk, walk, I must bundle my wallets and walk. The wind does blow as it lists alway; Canst thou change this world to thy mind? The world will wander its own wise way; I also will wander mine, mine, I also will wander mine.

I He stood outside the gates of Lhasa for four days singing I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed, but the berries are delicious if you remember to wash them.

for Anselm Hollo I what is most valued, the cherished things any moment in Iowa settles so carelessly upon you—cat stickers, a coded signal Home Orange Juice is trucking by, some morning or any day when winter spring summer and the poem begin again II who was it started laughing? someone otherwise somber, the Christmas lariateer spinning double circles, dancing through the lasso at his side, bullwhipping cigarettes from his lovely assistant’s scarlet mouth every hour on the hour next to the howling Santa Claus III would have thought other- wise, conceded the point at first argument; of course there were mornings, the hills went on to Cedar Rapids and Davenport; in its own season the corn’s pollen stung another hand; brown rivers paled with ice; those were the truck washes we had known before, the spit of gravel from the humming wheels; the patient customer of truck stops knows the best of these returns, hulks them into the dark of his coffee with rounded shoulders and extended forearms IV it is the line of force or the vector that sees us through our ambiguities, diagram of rivers, path the semi takes among its various winds, turn the night makes at a neon sign, EATS, locus of all points on the lasso’s rim, itself remembered; somehow each of us knows the double twist of brittle fiber that holds the line together, knows the turns the rain takes, heaves the long land rests against our feet

Though friendships differ endless in degree, The sorts, methinks, may be reduced to three. Ac quaintance many, and Con quaintance few; But for In quaintance I know only two— The friend I've mourned with, and the maid I woo!

When Hope but made Tranquillity be felt— A Flight of Hopes for ever on the wing But made Tranquillity a conscious Thing— And wheeling round and round in sportive coil Fann'd the calm air upon the brow of Toil—

After wandering years Basho returned to gaze at his umbilical cord pickled in a jar. Plopped in brine years ago like the frog in the pond in his famous haiku. Of course fame meant nothing to him. He stood in the blazing rain in his family graveyard and as a crow squawked overhead the stones proclaimed him the last of his line. He kept feeling inside his straw raincoat for a missing limb or the hole where the wind and rain flew in. I'll get drunk tonight, he thought, and his eyelashes glistened as he trudged back to his hermit's hut to gaze again at the jar.

1 Because he, because she, in so far as she (in so far as he) exists is on the way to battle. Not what is your name, but what the battle? 2 “Each one of us has come here and changed” — is the battle. Born a loved one, borne a loved one. 3 My father fought in this war, thus I can speak of it. My mother fought in this, thus I can speak. My friends, my lovers have fought, have worn (like the tree) their several directions at once. And I, in so far as I can say “I” have fought to be related to these — we strive and strain but also try to ripen the entity of the Other. 4 We kiss on lips, where the tenses attach. We enter the conundrum of another’s becoming. We look for someone who can raise us up again to feet, or near to standing. We tend in our terrors to forget (we do not store them) felicities. I try each day to stay near beings, mornings when I am most mild. And may I nothing harm, in case it is them.

He seems to be in front helping me look out of my foreheaded self. Listen to me: prone night. I was its actual first child cutting a path with my sword through its vapors. Then I subdued night until the desert was clear and a disk shone above. I am the hero of the struggle between de- spair and illumination, which is not a shaky buoyancy but claritas. The name of life or that you see at all. Just look. If you kill yourself nothing will happen. No choices but pedestrian actions a lying story: you have done nothing. You can be a detail — a scurrier — garbage you leave, a fit of nerves, propagating that. The front of my looking out pulls beauty taking me taking you. The scab in the sky is gone. We have to go beyond our calculations and the small words. Why a golden fringe on shirt come quickly riding the best horses. And nux is what night the worthless was, as I sang, We don’t have to believe the petite poetries. Hooves are pulling us across the yellow sands: lost in a word, led in a word I got there. I can never turn back, you see and you can never turn back.

i (feoh) Wealth is a comfort                    to every man yet every man must divide it mightily If   he wishes to have the measurer’s mercy ii (ur) The ox is steady-hearted and over-horned A fierce and famous beast                      it fights with horns Glorious moor-stepper                that is a noble creature v (rad) Riding is mild for warriors                    at their hearthsides and strong-bold                             for he mounted on the back of a mighty horse                          over a distance measured in miles vii (gyfu) A gift is the grace                           and praise of men and warmth and worthship                    to all exiles sustenance for him                       who is stripped of all else viii (wyn) Joy is won                            by whoever knows little of woe sourness or sorrow                        and who has for himself breath and bliss                              and fullness and a fortified place x (nyd) Need is bound in the breast         yet nonetheless becomes for the sons of men a help and healing both                 if   they heed in time xv (eolxh) Elk-sedge is found                          most often in a fen it waxes in water                             and wounds severely burns in the blood                          of each man’s body who with his hand                          takes hold of it xx (man) Man in mirth                  is dear to his kin yet must every one                         betray the other for that reason                the Lord dooms wretched flesh                                 be taken by the earth