from "Against Which"
Against which, snow slants — against those
firs all across campus — slants against
them, whitens the ground, whitens out.
The apprehension of necessity is an
imitation of creation. Out on the
grounds, no bodies. Bodies, now, only
inside buildings. Bodies bend over books,
stand at windows, gaze at whiting
out; some even believe they’ll remember
these minutes. All the tragedies that
we can imagine return at last
to the one and only tragedy,
the passage of time. And there,
suspended above the old gymnasium floor,
a running track — beveled, springy, thunderous
when pummeled by feet. Below, on
the court, two-on-two, sneaker-squeals, thuds,
curses. Some — here, elsewhere — even believe
they understand what the body is,
truly is. Perhaps they do — and
how it will be whited out.
Neither a soul, nor a mind,
nor an object of knowledge; nor
reason, intellect, thought, nor utterable, knowable;
number, order, greatness, littleness, equality, inequality,
likeness nor unlikeness.
*
Unkempt. Rich. Trievable. She insists that
the is the most important word.
Nephilim were on the earth in
those ancient days, when the sons
of God went in to the
daughters of humans, who bore children
to them. Effable. Infenced. Undelimited Amor
fati. He longs for that back
parlor’s corner niche with its shadow
that he’d draw back into, away
from immensities. They resided in a
land that devours its inhabitants. There
we saw them; to ourselves we
seemed like grasshoppers, as we seemed
to them. Over and over, her
diary references a coming great event;
then, after several blank pages, writing
continues without another mention of it.
The park’s unlighted stretch spooks them
into imagining they’re bugs scuttling off
from peril. Where you come from
is gone, where you thought you
were going to never was there,
and where you are is no
good unless you can get away.
Rimful. Conscionable. Undwelling.