536 Philosophy poems

a sense of his thirty-third year takes his elbow * any kind of he says sniff must be allowed to mature * an accident leaves him and finally the swallows * by way of curiosity he is no hand by no means to depict a woman * often he knows a crowded room * just out of his mother he falls between the pursuit and a case he’d sooner forget * he has a female muscle camouflaged for impact * streets enough to welcome snow * he knowingly succumbs to the brown sitzbaths * his wife touches a foretaste so vivid that the sheen of timber upsets * in going this sort of persistence * difficulties of a heavy body placed in alternating gestures

This film, like many others, claims we’ll enjoy life now that we’ve come through difficulties, dangers so incredibly condensed that they must be over. If the hardship was undergone by others, we identified with them and, if the danger was survived by simpler life forms, they’re included in this moment when the credits roll and we don’t know when to stand

Whatever we do, whether we light strangers’ cigarettes—it may turn out to be a detective wanting to know who is free with a light on a lonely street nights— or whether we turn away and get a knife planted between our shoulders for our discourtesy; whatever we do—whether we marry for love and wake up to find love is a task, or whether for convenience to find love must be won over, or we are desperate— whatever we do; save by dying, and there too we are caught, by being planted too close to our parents.

1 Beneath the writing on the wall is the writing it was designed to obscure. The two together form a third kind 2 There is no writing on the wall’s other side Perhaps this lack constitutes a fourth kind 3 Some of the writing on the wall will be designed as truth some as art 4 It is said to represent a mirror of everyday life in its time 5 “Fabius Naso talks through his asshole and shits out his mouth” for example 6 “Foute les Arabes” for example 7 Certain words and images or parts of images have been chipped away These often turn up for sale at sidewalk stalls before the walls of other cities 8 I too have an image for sale It’s the image of a poem and is to be found on the reverse of this sheet

The frightful reality of things Is my everyday discovery. Each thing is what it is. How can I explain to anyone how much I rejoice over this, and find it enough? To be whole, it is enough to exist. I have written quite a number of poems And may write many more, of course. Each poem of mine explains it, Though all my poems are different, Because each thing that exists is always proclaiming it. Sometimes I busy myself with watching a stone, I don't begin thinking whether it feels. I don't force myself to call it my sister, But I enjoy it because of its being a stone, I enjoy it because it feels nothing, I enjoy it because it is not at all related to me. At times I also hear the wind blow by And find that merely to hear the wind blow makes it worth having been born. I don't know what others will think who read this; But I find it must be good because I think it without effort, And without the idea of others hearing me think, Because I think it without thoughts, Because I say it as my words say it. Once they called me a materialist poet And I admired myself because I never thought That I might be called by any name at all. I am not even a poet: I see. If what I write has any value, it is not I who am valuable. The value is there, in my verses. All this has nothing whatever to do with any will of mine.

Town, a town, But location Over which the sun as it comes to it; Which cools, houses and lamp-posts, during the night, with the roads— Inhabited partly by those Who have been born here, Houses built—. From a train one sees him in the morning, his morning; Him in the afternoon, straightening— People everywhere, time and the work pauseless: One moves between reading and re-reading, The shape is a moment. From a crowd a white powdered face, Eyes and mouth making three— Awaited—locally—a date. * Near your eyes— Love at the pelvis Reaches the generic, gratuitous (Your eyes like snail-tracks) Parallel emotions, We slide in separate hard grooves Bowstrings to bent loins, Self moving Moon, mid-air. * Fragonard, Your spiral women By a fountain ‘1732’ Your picture lasts thru us its air Thick with succession of civilizations; And the women. * No interval of manner Your body in the sun. You? A solid, this that the dress insisted, Your face unaccented, your mouth a mouth? Practical knees: It is you who truly Excel the vegetable, The fitting of grasses—more bare than that. Pointedly bent, your elbow on a car-edge Incognito as summer Among mechanics. * ‘O city ladies’ Your coats wrapped, Your hips a possession Your shoes arched Your walk is sharp Your breasts Pertain to lingerie The fields are road-sides, Rooms outlast you. * Bad times: The cars pass By the elevated posts And the movie sign. A man sells post-cards. * It brightens up into the branches And against the same buildings A morning: His job is as regular.

Be willing to dismantle for the purposeof rebuilding on more solid structure.—Horoscope First you must lift the idea (be careful it may be heavy) and haul it out to the dumpster. Next locate the meaning—it may not come easily, though if you have the right tools and they are good tools you should have no difficulty. Now it is the sentences' turn: take each one strip it of grammar (you may need abrasives here) and hang them all on a line. When thoroughly dried, lay each one down on the grass or if you live in the city, the sidewalk will do. The point is, make sure you put them in harm's way, wherever you are. Don't try to protect them. It may be they will go to war, or wander the desert or haunt the streets like beggars or run from the police or suffer loneliness and despair. Remember: they must make their own way. The best you can do is to stay out of theirs and take them back in if they return.

Overhead, the match burns out, but the chunk of ice in the back seat keeps melting from imagined heat, while the old Hudson tiptoes up the slope. My voile blouse, so wet it is transparent, like one frightened hand, clutches my chest. The bag of rock salt sprawled beside me wakes, thirsty and stretches a shaky tongue toward the ice. I press the gas pedal hard. I’ll get back to the house, the dirt yard, the cesspool, to you out back, digging a well you could fill with your sweat, though there is not one reason I should want to. You never notice me until the end of the day, when your hand is on my knee and the ice cream, cooked to broth, is hot enough to burn the skin off my touch.

One says: please no inner life, manners by all means, but nothing affective, that’s no compensation for the insufferable difficulties of outward-directed expression— those cerebralized city-Styxes when my little prince pokes his chubby little legs through the bars of his cot it melts my heart, it was like that with Otto Ernst, and it’s no different now the contraries are not easy to reconcile but when you survey the provinces the inner life has it by a neck.

Do not despair of man, and do not scold him, Who are you that you should so lightly hold him? Are you not also a man, and in your heart Are there not warlike thoughts and fear and smart? Are you not also afraid and in fear cruel, Do you not think of yourself as usual, Faint for ambition, desire to be loved, Prick at a virtuous thought by beauty moved? You love your wife, you hold your children dear, Then say not that Man is vile, but say they are. But they are not. So is your judgement shown Presumptuous, false, quite vain, merely your own Sadness for failed ambition set outside, Made a philosophy of, prinked, beautified In noble dress and into the world sent out To run with the ill it most pretends to rout. Oh know your own heart, that heart's not wholly evil, And from the particular judge the general, If judge you must, but with compassion see life, Or else, of yourself despairing, flee strife.