536 Philosophy poems

As the light goes, go. Be the rustling in the grass, the fall from convention's good graces: learn, or someone will have you filing files or writing writs, demonstrating cutlery or selling knowledge door to door; someone might even drop your lovely life into a factory and have you derusting rings on the coolant-spouting turntable of a vertical lathe. It's best for everyone that what you know is generally thought of as general knowledge. You can find it in pool rooms and roadside bars, in meadows as inviting as beds, in bedrooms where it whispers like a ribbon untying; you can even find it in schools. But be careful: it's dangerous, inescapable and exact down to every atom of everything there is, to every name each thing goes by and every law each thing obeys. And the best part is, you always know more than you know.

capable of feeling while in contact with another? I look at the red-tiled roofs outside, at all the angles facing the white-blue cloudless sky like the creases in Bellini’s angel’s silver-blue dress, Tintoretto’s white one that’s practically transparent in his Annunciazione at the San Rocco — cloth complex as thought! Then the bells start, flood the void.

What is staying alive? To possess A great hall inside of a cell. What is it to know? The same root Underneath the branches. What is it to believe? Being a carer Until relief takes over. And to forgive? On fours through thorns To keep company to an old enemy. What is it to sing? To receive breath From the genius of creation. What's work but humming a song From wood and wheat. What are state affairs? A craft That's still only crawling? And armaments? Thrust a knife In a baby's fist. Being a nation? What can it be? A gift In the swell of the heart. And to love a country? Keeping house In a cloud of witnesses. What's the world to the all powerful? A circle spinning. And to the children of the earth? A cradle rocking.

Let us tunnel Through the rubble, Through the thrum. Let us rut through the sum Of who we were, Or are, Or will be in the years to come: A couple Of someones Who used to be in love.

not an answer. She leaned into the apple tree, which then was evergreen, to the snake’s hands, sweet flesh, no need to be ashamed. We share and share alike, the peel not loose like night on day, but tight. She took the snake’s hands, diamondbacked, and opened its question. It was the first time she had something to give, what the man couldn’t take, the first time the man said please: please let me have a bite. He found the iron ore and brought it home. He found the coal under the forest and lit it on fire to watch it go so the snake couldn’t catch her if she fell and she couldn’t hold anything but its tongue. Never let the fire go out or else, he warned, and she held on.

This isn’t maths — perhaps it is a collapse of certainties. Perhaps it can’t configure planes, yet it can cloud our blue remains so when we fall as rain will do, nothing fails to carry through.

Not one star, not even the half moon on the night you were born Not the flash of salmon nor ridges on blue snow Not the flicker of raven’s never-still eye Not breath frozen in fine hairs beading the bull moose’s nostril Not one hand under flannel warming before reaching Not burbot at home under Tanana ice not burbot pulled up into failing light Not the knife blade honed, not the leather sheath Not raw bawling in the dog yard when the musher barks gee Not the gnawed ends of wrist-thick sticks mounded over beaver dens Not solar flares scouring the earth over China Not rime crystals bearding a sleek cheek of snow Not six minutes more of darkness each day Not air water food words touch Not art Not anything we expect Not anything we expect to keep Not anything we expect to keep us alive Not the center of the sea Not the birthplace of the waves Not the compass too close to true north to guide us Then with no warning flukes of three orcas rise, arc clear of sea water

Whatever is we only know As in our minds we find it so; No staring fact is half so clear As one dim, preconceived idea -- No matter how the fact may glow. Vainly may Truth her trumpet blow To stir our minds; like heavy dough They stick to what they think — won’t hear Whatever is. Our ancient myths in solid row Stand up — we simply have to go And choke each fiction old and dear Before the modest facts appear; Then we may grasp, reluctant, slow, Whatever is.

You can say the broken word but cannot speak for it, can name a precise and particular shade of blue if you can remember its name (Woman of the South, New Lilac, Second Sky?) As the light, close to blinding, fell—falls in bars across a particular page, this then another, some other followed far too closely by night Or as the sleeping pages recall themselves, one by one, in dream-riddled, guarded tones, recall themselves from path to sloped meadow, meadow to burnt shore, shore to poised wave, dismay to present, any present of the bewildered and the buried alive (we’ve been told they were buried alive) Is there a door he hasn’t noticed and beyond it a letter which created the door or claims it created a door which would open either way

I. The empty of stomach manifests silence a stillness that levels coffee in a cup and in a respectful manner allows steam to penetrate the surface. Reversal of action has created my sandstone canyon rooted cedar and sage at my feet. This movement is where a tranquility stems. II. When my child creates bubbles through a soapy wand, I occupy the action of fate that bursts the perfect form. A halcyon absorbed nesting within the existence of the form that no longer exists. The formless form is where my mind floats. III. It is easy to give form especially with English words a promotion of mechanical ligaments binding spirit with assembly-fabricated molds. Just as my hair poses an appendage of my brain my tongue poses an appendage of my heart. I cannot classify this thought as a typewritten symbol. An ideogram of essence cultivates my stillness to action.