Light Hides Behind the Night

Something is turning its back and forth.
Flares hit and slide. Smacks drip down the back
Of empty walls, dim light
Hangs and glides.

Plants are not the only things that grow. Growing is the flow
Of sound. Something on the other side
Wails, the blue dogs lick their sap, and the red moon
Knows no remorse. It is night for the planet of swamps,
Night for the spaces interspersed
In space; night even lies beyond.

We live in the world of night --
Past the sun it's always 12 o'clock,
When atoms spin,
That's their tock.

So let lights dance and fade: light can never hide,
Unless it mixes what it's not.
Then it slows and seeps, to darken
And glow. This magic is the play of light,
The stage of light, the way light hides
Behind the night.

Taskmaster

Things don't go well. I ignore
My obligations, I give myself over
To wanton speculations and receive
Nothing but receipts. It is cold
And I, I am weak: I get tired or bored
Or anxious. Most of all I cannot
Work. Why work?

Push off duty to the next tomorrow.
(Let's just hope it doesn't push us back.)

What if I were resolute? The wise
Sit down to contemplation; they keep themselves warm
In the winter, they find shelter from the sun
In the midst of its heat. The wise man
Aims at his purpose and hits it; he does not
Waver, he knows the planets
And their constellations. "The world
Wanders on its course."

I am not wise. I orient myself by means of space
And not by time -- not by the limitless depth of time,
Nor by reference to the boundaries
Of my time -- I squander time -- I live my life
As prodigal and profligate.

Life is an hourglass. Life is the progress of the sun.
The sun itself is profligate; its nature
Generally dispersed, its business is tired
And hungry. At least there is necessity,
At least these fluctuations bound
Between their boundaries, at least the wages of sin respect
The law of supply and demand. So let my energy seep,
Let me gather and disperse, let me struggle against my nature
With my nature and between my nature. To be is not to be
The things one ought to be --
If everything that ought to be should be,
Then wherein would it differ from what is?
That 'ought' implies 'can' and 'can' implies 'might not' is enough
For aims and purposes -- when they hit and when they fail.

Psalm

Let me strum it and praise you,
My fingers will make
Harmony for my voice, my voice
For my thought, and
My thought will echo
Your own love, since only you
Can love the world
When you love yourself.

The order of the world
Is the order of time,
And the order of time would be
Your will. Time is fore-
And uttermost, and in it
Things resound.

Very like a melody or song,
These things, though truth
Is that the song and melody
Is the analogue or maybe
The analogy. "God

Is in each thing, and so
The purpose of a thing's
The will of God."
Then let me know
Each thing, and let me sing
A song of songs, let me hum
The tune of praise.

If I could truly love
You I would love
Your world, my affection
Would be constant, equal,
Just. So am I wrong
To lose myself in things,
To lose the whole?
If I have lost the whole,
Have I lost you?

We are not the whole --
We are the meaning of the whole;
We are not the meaning of things,
But in these things, we find our meaning.
Let us take these meanings and arrange them.
Let us lose ourselves and find ourselves.
Let us bring things back and then disperse.
This is melody and harmony. To sing
Is to forget your God and in forgetting
To remember, by forgetting.

Naturalism

How can I be an animal?
Would an animal ask this question?
An animal asks this question!
What is it that they are?
What is it that we are?

What we are, I think
I know: we think and know.
But we're the ones who sing!
Who dance and dwell, speak,
Write down ideas
And calculate,
Reason and dispute,
Desire, fantasize,
Inquire, care, dance!
All of this motley
Dazzles us:
If we must be ourselves
We cannot see ourselves.

What is an animal?
A thing that lives.
An animal's a thing?
Well it is something...
An organism, ordered,
Organized, functional
And functioning -- the thing
Fulfills its purposes: we beasts
Have purposes to satisfy --
To sate we sow
And reap ourselves:
Our being or beings like us
Our own reward.

An animal lives -- so what is life?
An animal is big or small, simple
Or complex, intelligent
Or surd -- but an animal lives.
We live and fish and bears and insects
Live. We eat and fuck and fart.
That's hard to digest.

"But what's the matter?
Isn't it just matter?" Life
Is not reduced to matter -- matter
Is induced to life. Our arrangement
Has its own potentials -- life
Is this potential. But possibilities
Diverge -- I cannot be
A bee, nor can it be
What I am. Speaking,
Building, dancing, caring
Are our properties -- our possibilities --
Potentials maybe in the stuff that is arranged
But only as arranged. Arrangement can
Indubitably be explained -- but that
Is not our business. Our business,
Our concern -- is what we do.

Word Games

Is he out there? He would be a source:
When he spoke, things were.
And yet he was -- though everything's a word,
It's all his word, and he is not a word.
Then what's the difference between words
And things? (Our words if this is true
Are pale reflections of these other words
Which rest on that which only speaks
And is not spoken, though it is referred
-- Though it is preferred.)

God is alone and God is one -- alone
Since nothing can compare to him, which means
There is no quality in things which things
Ascribe to God -- if things are words
They have no meaning which could mean
Their God. And God is one. What is
This singularity? Not the unity
Of things. If God is one as they are one
Then he is not alone -- but then
If he's alone, how can he be one?
His solitary nature must itself
Compose his unity. But wherefore
All this talk? How can words express
The meaning of the one who spoke
And made all things that speak? It's idle
Talk to mention qualities, to seek beyond these things
For what is not a thing. Only a residue of glory
Can accrue to the impossible, unthinkable --
The glory of things possible and thought.
So let us praise his work, upon which
We agree or disagree. To worship God
Is loving what he's made, a love that can be made
To speak -- when it is spoken to.

A beat poem with no significance

How will the will collect itself,
How can it? It must be
Master of caprice --
A matter of caprice. Pain's the thing
That pardons
Sin, pleasure
Its persuasion. Is it only
A matter of conscience,
A kind of consciousness --
To know the evil
And what's good? The will
Is force or forced, empowering
Or overpowered -- is the will
The will to do what's good,
Or that which does the good it wills?
Does it will or does it act,
Or is to will an act?
We wish for possibilities, our hope
Is bright, our fear is dark, the will
Aligns itself with what is bright
And good. That
At which hope aims is bright
And fleet, but fleet things
Fly. We only catch them if we fall,
And when we fall, we find ourselves,
In pleasure or in pain,
Among the objects of our will. The will,
Persuaded by the present, aims
At possibilities, but these
Are only possibilities
Of possibilities.

Every Cliche in the Book

Let me be impure.
Let me make mistakes.
Let me err.
Let me wander off the course.

I still want to be good.

To be good is to return,
To come back to the truth again and again, not
Not to falter, but to falter
And remain. To be good
Is to progress behind
Regress and transgression.
To be good is to begin back at the end.

I have wasted myself
On amusements,
Sweet things, tasteless things:
Games, sex, sleep.

I haven't kept up with poetry.
I haven't looked towards the good.
I've become too honest for poetry:
I'm no longer bold enough to lie.

I'm lost. But you come to yourself
When you're lost. You realize where you are.
Because you lose yourself in everyday
"business as usual". You don't see what's in front of you
Because "you know your way about". When I'm lost
I "come to myself with a start".

I come to myself -- I come back to myself --
I realize where I'm going, where I am, who I am.
I realize that I'm not what I thought,
That I've outstripped myself -- because
I've fallen behind. I come back to myself
"With a start" -- fresh:
Disorientation is reorientation.

But it can't last.

You can't stay still and simply look at things for long.
The world catches up to you, and you fall back
Into the rhythm of the day.

That gives you pause: will I always wander off
And wander back, from thing to thing?
Can I break off everything I've started
To begin again? And isn't this perpetual renewal
Getting old -- isn't it beginning
To wear me down?

To stay in place or to move -- to rest or to be wrenched --
Tired business. I want peace -- clarity and peace --
No more weary wandering. But I can't rest
Until I've found myself, and I cannot find myself
Because I'm not here -- because I've lost myself
Too often to come back to where I am. Where I am
Is someplace I am not, and I've forgotten
How I got there. Everything is endless,
And yet, just because it's endless,
It must have an end.

If I cannot find the end
Then it will soon end me.

I don't know how to end this.

Hymn to Discipline

Give me discipline and give me a discipline.
"Why restriction? Life is free
For its pleasures,
And you have your pleasures."
Is there discipline in leisure?

Yes, things are free
In their necessity -- free
To fate. A bird's is the domain of air
Which she pursues with wing
In all directions. That is an image
Of liberty. But things
Move themselves to danger without rules --
Evolution is the founder of life's laws
In every circumstance.
I want that guidance and protection.

"And your pleasures? Your desires?
Can you evade them, and do you want to?
Each urge wrestles with its sweetness.
Don't you want to taste this syrup
And linger with it? We come to peace
In pleasure: the mind
Loses itself in the act,
Is not always working slantwise,
Pushes at the thing that gives."

A desire is a labor, a hard
Thing. Free me from my desires
So that I can rest, discipline.
Discipline chooses its work
And works into it. Discipline
Keeps itself moving too fast
For pleasure to gain purchase.
Discipline sweats, discipline depletes,
Disciplines uses things up
And wears them out, freeing them
For their potential --
The fulfillment of desire
Drains out of a thing, leaving it
Dirty and cold,
But discipline burns through it like a fire,
Bringing it to light and heat.

Elements

Called it the light of being,
The congery of elements
Has something to do with it: earth,
Fire, water, air --
"Call it by what it does."

The thing that stands and joins them
Is and holds the revelation. But
Is it? Are these?

The ground on which we stand,
The force that cooks our food,
Bringing us to warmth, the medium
In which we move, breathe,
The boundary of the continent
It holds and it divides
Which keeps it too -- this is the stuff
Of which the world's made.

So the Greeks. But is it? Now
What do we know? Are there only four?

"Everything is the same.
The world is the circling
Circle of its times
Compressed into a point,
Equal to itself and nowhere
Closer than it is, one
Without force or division, neither
Static nor restless, no distinction
Keeps the world from its truth."

"The world is the sum
Of moving forces, combinations of distinct
Manifestations, accidentally drawn
Into their necessary forms, which change
Like the day changes, like plants
Change, growing out of itself
Into something it is not."

Purification

I have wandered off far.
"It is only journeyings,
It is only travels."

I have strayed. What do you demand?
"What do you demand?"
Purification.

"What is purification?"

The water washes over the skin.
"You require a vessel."
The skin has been prepared with soap.
"Then where will you find the formula?"
The water returns and carries things away.

What is the water?
"The water is the light."
What is the vessel? -- Is it the body?
"But light will not come to the body."
Light comes to the eyes.

Then let the light enter,
Let it enter. The eyes are the vessel,
The water is the light.

And what is the detergent? With what
Will the light bind? Soap
Mediates the water and the dirt,
Carries the dirt into the water
And out through the water. The opposite of light
Is darkness, just as earth
Opposes water. What will stand
Between the darkness and the light
To reconcile them, bind them, let them
Fall away?