536 Philosophy poems

The accumulation of reefs piling up one over the others like thoughts of the sky increasing as the head rises unto horizons of wet December days perforated with idle motions of gulls . . . and our feelings. I’ve been wondering about what you mean, standing in the spray of shadows before an ocean abandoned for winter, silent as a barque of blond hair. and the way the clouds are bending, the way they “react” to your position, where your hands close over your breasts like an eyelid approving the opening of “an evening’s light.” parasites attach themselves to the moss covering your feet, blind Cubans tossing pearls across the jetty, and the sound of blood fixes our eyes on the red waves. it is a shark! and our love is that rusted bottle . . . pointing north, the direction which we turn, conjuring up our silver knives and spoons and erasing messages in the sand, where you wrote “freezing in the arctic of our dreams,” and I said “yes” delaying the cold medium for a time while you continued to “cultivate our possessions” as the moon probably “continued” to cradle. tan below the slant of all those wasted trees while the scent carried us back to where we were: dancing like the children of great diplomats with our lean bodies draped in bedsheets and leather flags while the orchestra made sounds which we thought was the sky, but was only a series of words, dying in the thick falsetto of mist. for what can anyone create from all these things: the fancied tilt of stars, sordid doves burning in the hollow brick oven, oceans which generalize tears, it is known to us in immediate gestures, like candle drippings on a silk floor. what are we going to do with anything? besides pick it up gently and lay it on the breath of still another morning, mornings which are always remaining behind for one thing or another shivering in our faces of pride and blooming attitude. in the draught of winter air my horse is screaming you are welcoming the new day with your hair leaning against the sand, feet dive like otters in the frost and the sudden blue seems to abandon as you leap. O to make everything summer! soldiers move along lines like wet motions in the violent shade’s reappearance. but what if your shadow no longer extends to my sleeping? and your youth dissolves in my hand like a tongue, as the squandered oceans and skies will dissolve into a single plane (so I’ll move along that plane)                unnoticed and gray as a drift of skulls over the cool Atlantic where I am standing now, defining you in perhaps, the only word I can. as other words are appearing, so cunningly, on the lips of the many strips of light. like naked bodies stretched out along the only beach that remained, brown and perfect below the descending of tides.

in the stream [1] look, the duck-rabbits swim between. The Mill Race at Granta Place tosses them from form to form, dissolving bodies in the spume. Given A and see [2] find be [3] (look at you, don’t look at me) [4] Given B, see A and C. that’s what metaphor [5] is for. Date and place in the expression of a face [6] provide the frame for an instinct to rename, [7] to try to hold apart Gestalt and Art. [1] Of consciousness [2] The expression of a change of aspect is the expression of a new perception. [3] And at the same time of the perception’s being unchanged. [4] Do not ask yourself “How does it work with me?” Ask “What do I know about someone else?” [5] Here it is useful to introduce the idea of a picture-object. [6] A child can talk to picture-men or picture-animals. It can treat them as it treats dolls. [7] Hence the flashing of an aspect on us seems half visual experience, half thought.

Walk through the edges, circumvent the center. (Circle the square, so to speak). Having parted ways with the crossroad, take each path offered, and unite into a thousand thousand fragments. Stutter in the tongues of men and angels. Spit out the honorific truth: rave stark as a mad woman. Destitute, discover the ancestral home and sit down to fast sumptuously at the high table. Comforted, stare into the mirror that divided all these years, the mirror that melts in the mouth. Now, speak clearly.

I pour a coating of salt on the table and make a circle in it with my finger. This is the cycle of life I say to no one. This is the wheel of fortune, the Arctic Circle. This is the ring of Kerry and the white rose of Tralee I say to the ghosts of my family, the dead fathers, the aunt who drowned, my unborn brothers and sisters, my unborn children. This is the sun with its glittering spokes and the bitter moon. This is the absolute circle of geometry I say to the crack in the wall, to the birds who cross the window. This is the wheel I just invented to roll through the rest of my life I say touching my finger to my tongue.

By a peninsula the painter sat and Sketched the uneven valley groves. The apostle gave alms to the Meek. The volcano burst In fusive sulphur and hurled Rocks and ore into the air— Heaven’s sudden change at The drawing tempestuous, Darkening shade of dense clouded hues. The wanderer soon chose His spot of rest; they bore the Chosen hero upon their shoulders, Whom they strangely admired, as The beach-tide summer of people desired.

Crumbling is not an instant's Act A fundamental pause Dilapidation's processes Are organized Decays — 'Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul A Cuticle of Dust A Borer in the Axis An Elemental Rust — Ruin is formal — Devil's work Consecutive and slow — Fail in an instant, no man did Slipping — is Crashe's law —

How did you come How did I come here Now it is ours, how did it come to be In so many presences? Some I know swept from the sea, wind and sea, Took up the right wave in their fins and seal suits, Rode up over the town to this shore Shining and sleek To be caught by a tide As of music, or color, or shape in the heart of the sea. Was it you? Was it you who came out from the sea-floor as lab into lab Weightless, each breath Bubbling to surface, swaying in currents of kelp plants, Came in your cars Freewayed in valleys millions of miles from the shore To converge where the highways converge saying welcome to here, And to where? To tape and percussion, raga computers, Rare texts and components of clay, With the sea down away past the freeways and out of the town To the blockbusting towers of learning and quiet Shades of administering redwood, Azure dome over all like a bellflower And star above star. Did you come Out of borderlands dear to the south Speaking a language Riveran, Nerudan, and saying Aqui estáun hombre; my first lesson? And come as Quixote, the man of romance In its new century, tilting At windmill giants of concrete, Slim lance at the ready? Woe unto them That join house to house, that lay field to field Till there be no place that they may be alone In the midst of the earth. Did you come With a handful of questions Leaping like jewels To shock answers, to start Sparks of inquiry into the evening air? I came as a kid From the Midwest all recognize As part of home, To this another Which the salt sea answered in its time And Viscaino mapped his ports upon. You came As concertmaster of hte Philharmonic As mayor of Del Mar As reader of magnetic messages in DNA As archivist for the time’s poetry, or PTA, As land-grant scholar Holding his gray moon rocks. What is this that we come to, Its walls and corridors Gaping in space, its north lights Seeking the north, its substance Concrete brushed by the grains of its boards, Its boards reaching extension in all of their lenghts In architectural solidity? It is A break in the galaxies of our imagination. It needs our lives To make it live. A building, a dark hole in space, Compact of matter, Draws into it buzzing disinterests, Idelologies. Incomplete being Enters into the dense room, emerges Another, further, Compact of matter, this is the place that we enter, It paints pictures here and plays drums. It turns us around and we emerge Out of old space into the universe. This building Between buildings as between galaxies, Between fields as between flights of fancy, Will reshape our ears and turn us, Our work of art Beating in the breast like a heart. What are we here for? To err, To fail and attempt as terribly as possible, to try Stunts of such magnitude they will lead To disasters of such magnitude they will lead To learnings of such magnitude they will lend Back in enterprise to substance and grace. What learning allows for is the making of error Without fatality. The wandering off, the aberration, Distortion and deviation By which to find again the steady center And moving center. What art allows for is the provisional Enactments of such learning In their forms Of color and line, of mass and energy, of sound And sense Which bulk disaster large, create evil To look it in the eye. To forge Villainies of the wars, to indispose Villainies of petty establishment To make them lead their lives in sound and sense To no good end, that we may see them so. To make mistakes All of our own mistakes Out of the huddle of possibilities Into a color and form which will upbraid them Beyond their being. Give us to err Grandly as possible in this complete Complex of structure, risk a soul Nobly in north light, in cello tone, In action of drastic abandonment, That we return to what we have abandoned And make it whole. Domesticate the brushed Cement and wood marquee, Fracture the corridors, Soften the lights of observation and renew Structural kindness into its gentler shapes. Out of the sea The kelp tangles, out of the south The cities crowd, out of the sky The galaxies emerge in isolation One from another, and the faces here Look one to antoher in surprise At what has been made. Look at the actual Cliffs and canyons of this place, People and programs, mass and energy Of fact, Look at the possibilities. Irradiating all these possibilities. Praise then The arts of law and science as of life The arts of sound and substance as of faith Which claim us here To take, as a building, as a fiction, takes us, Into another frame of space Where we can ponder, celebrate, and reshape Not only what we are, where we are from, But what in the risk and moment of our day We may become.

It swallows all it swallows, mass mistaken for mass, swallows it all as storm surge swallows swaths of shoreline, offers for the finding after only slivers of glass, deflects off weathered edifice, trickles through tumbledown. Deflects barely, a swallow off the surface of a farm pond. Even on cold nights, not all brilliance mimics the crystalline. Not all wisdom waits, not all that winters winters underground. Unspoken, any summons to silent predation. • I name it Forsakenness Knob, that ridge where wind and loss merge, where what I see looks like something beyond what sight can prove, frost figured as so many bare branches. And omens, my god, so many, like animal tracks, but they merge, blown over by another snow. Body they once were, mind they may since have melted into, omens may they prove.

Mankind, Surrender a fancied dream of birth. Accept science of recent years. To date, Africa marks first form of man; here in dust most recent proof lies. History here emerges bone by bone. Dig—dig—dig. May Africa reward the search if only through eroded bones. Fit them together; date them. Shape the skeleton of earliest man. This is history. Sing another song in vain. In vain contrive a different tune. Dust will prevail. It always does.

In my youth I was told that in a certain city every one lived according to the Scriptures. And I said, “I will seek that city and the blessedness thereof.” And it was far.  And I made great provision for my journey.  And after forty days I beheld the city and on the forty-first day I entered into it. And lo! the whole company of the inhabitants had each but a single eye and but one hand.  And I was astonished and said to myself, “Shall they of this so holy city have but one eye and one hand?” Then I saw that they too were astonished, for they were marveling greatly at my two hands and my two eyes.  And as they were speaking together I inquired of them saying, “Is this indeed the Blessed City, where each man lives according to the Scriptures?”  And they said, “Yes, this is that city.” “And what,” said I, “hath befallen you, and where are your right eyes and your right hands?” And all the people were moved.  And they said, “Come thou and see.” And they took me to the temple in the midst of the city.  And in the temple I saw a heap of hands and eyes.  All withered.  Then said I, “Alas! what conqueror hath committed this cruelty upon you?” And there went a murmur amongst them.  And one of their elders stood forth and said, “This doing is of ourselves.  God hath made us conquerors over the evil that was in us.” And he led me to a high altar, and all the people followed.  And he showed me above the altar an inscription graven, and I read: “If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that the whole body should be cast into hell.  And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” Then I understood.  And I turned about to all the people and cried, “Hath no man or woman among you two eyes or two hands?” And they answered me saying, “No, not one.  There is none whole save such as are yet too young to read the Scripture and to understand its commandment.” And when we had come out of the temple, I straightway left that Blessed City; for I was not too young, and I could read the scripture.