WHAT A PIECE OF WORK… IS A MAN!

How noble in reason!

how infinite in faculties!

in form and moving how express and admirable!

in action how like an angel!

in apprehension how like a god!

the beauty of the world!

the paragon of animals!

And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

–

(W. Shakespeare)

A PROPHETIC DREAM …

It is not given to me to be myself –

I am not alienated

Rather, I am definitely Other —

The Otherness which erupts into my life

with stunning clarity —

in the shape of a gesture, a face, a form, a word —

A Prophetic Dream —

a witticism, an object, a woman, a desert…

Inasmuch as my life is played out within the Other,

it becomes a mystery to itself –

Inasmuch as my will is transferred to the Other,

it becomes a mystery to itself –

The Other is what allows me not to repeat myself

for ever ————————

–

(J. Baudrillard)

THE GRAVEDIGGER …

OCEAN OF EARTH …

I have built a house in the middle of the Ocean

Its windows are the rivers flowing from my eyes

Octopi are crawling all over where the walls are

Hear their triple hearts beat and their beaks peck against

the windowpanes

House of dampness

House of burning

Season’s fastness

Season singing

The airplanes are laying eggs

Watch out for the dropping of the anchor

Watch out for the shooting black ichor

It would be good if you were to come from the sky

The sky’s honeysuckle is climbing

The earthly octopi are throbbing

And so very many of us have become our own

gravediggers

–

(G. Apollinaire)

I DREAM …

that I am Oedipus.

What I want back is what I was

Before the bed, before the knife,

Before the brooch-pin and the salve

Fixed me in this parenthesis;

Horses fluent in the wind,

A place, a time gone out of mind.

–

(S. Plath)

SHE GIVES HIM EYES …

she found them

Among some rubble, among some beetles

He gives her her skin

He just seemed to pull it down out of the air and lay it over her

She weeps with fearfulness and astonishment

She has found his hands for him, and fitted them freshly at the wrists

They are amazed at themselves, they go feeling all over her

He has assembled her spine, he cleaned each piece carefully

And sets them in perfect order

A superhuman puzzle but he is inspired

She leans back twisting this way and that, using it and laughing

Incredulous

Now she has brought his feet, she is connecting them

So that his whole body lights up

And he has fashioned her new hips

With all fittings complete and with newly wound coils, all shiningly oiled

He is polishing every part, he himself can hardly believe it

They keep taking each other to the sun, they find they can easily

To test each new thing at each new step

And now she smoothes over him the plates of his skull

So that the joints are invisible

–

(T. Hughes)

THE TRUE WAY …

is along a rope that is not

spanned high in the air,

but only just above the ground.

It seems intended more to cause stumbling

than to be walked along.

–

(F. Kafka)

WE ARE THE MIMICS …

CLOUDS …

are pedagogues

The air is not a mirror

but bare board

Coulisse bright-dark

tragic chiaroscuro

And comic color of the rose

in which

Abysmal instruments

make sounds like pips

Of the sweeping meanings

that we add to them

–

(W. Stevens)

FLYING INSIDE YOUR OWN BODY …

Your lungs fill & spread themselves,

wings of pink blood, and your bones

empty themselves and become hollow.

When you breathe in you’ll lift like a balloon

and your heart is light too & huge,

beating with pure joy, pure helium.

The sun’s white winds blow through you,

there’s nothing above you,

you see the earth now as an oval jewel,

radiant & seablue with love.

It’s only in dreams you can do this.

Waking …

–

(M. Atwood)

YOU, DARKNESS …

You, darkness, that I come from

I love you more than all the fires

that fence in the world,

for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone

and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything-

shapes and fires, animals and myself,

how easily it gathers them! –

powers and people-

and it is possible a great presence is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.  

–

(R.M. Rilke)

THE POET …

is a light

and winged

and holy thing,

and

there is no invention in him

until he has been inspired

and

is out of his senses,

and

the mind

is no longer in him

–

(Socrates)

LET ME NOW …

And a desire endlessly yearns for that

Which is unbound. There is much to

Hold on to. One must be faithful.

Let me now fall silent.

–

(Hölderlin, A Letter)