What is thought? What is it? A copy of
Something you did? Why should you suffer
The encircling presence of thought? Oh
Thought may indeed seem sufficient only
To the pale estimate of nature wrought,
Of a scene half-absorbed
by the senses.
A ghost! A snorting monster in the hills
Where I did battle laughingly, for us.
That was I, wasn’t it? Shall thought
consider what is true?
And now, here I am, lying on the couch
In the funny living room, very fatigued--
And she moves beyond this scene
where thought cannot gather
Her up. Oh no, just what I imagined!
I would be sure. Yes. The past and future,
Are involved in some dreary deadly exchange.
I would be almost disappointed in nature
For its grandiose claims have only given
Me the image of everything that I think,
so thought is only feeling and
I am repeating the wars of creation, an
Estimate stale for the prophet in chains!
And only reminiscent, itself, of a
dusty plain, a distant past,
Like a past within the past, thought within
Thought, and so on . . . to despair.
I said
That, and more, in the dialogue with the
Unconfessed. And yes, this is the opposite
Of what I really think and believe, as a
hero, commissioned of light.
But you want to be depressed, and unresolved,
And grow fatter in the spoiled afternoon--
And I can drive this to a test, and make
The hangers-on feel bad today, though I
Cannot make them
confess. For thought, oh
Thought itself, is caught thus in surplus
Sympathies, as if indeed we all
stood accused, as
If it were all of us who tore down like a
Mob the flapping sheets that hid the angel’s
Face. Thought is a presence, overwhelming
Even of emotion . . . it has drained your face
Of precious memories and put the vapour of
Dreams running in your blood.
And we have
Not begun, the table is set, and the radio
Is screaming, those rock and roll singers
Have no life apart, from their songs,
which are trilling on the
Wires, and we are neck and neck, in the race,
Unsponsored, free,
free enough, for fortune.
For what? For fortune, fortune rules the
Night within. For you, for no one, will avow
The truth established, no one can see
How nature carries her literal bearing,
How the seasons take her transparent wrapping,
Take her back, how nature and the world are
In the past, like a revelation; for no one
Can think, and only thought can grasp
what is yet
So exquisitely real, outside the window.
Oh, I am doomed to step--in sparkling ruins.
There is no wilderness, no northern land,
Or waters unsailed, the arctic explorers
Do not come back. That is the story.
People are lost
In episodes all over the globe, in cars
That sail on highways that approach the
Moon, on winding curves; and you have seen
Human life erased by the second hand on
A clock more deadly accurate than the
Brain. People are lost, in violent murders;
They are stepping right to the brink; and
There are zones where mild pacific winds
Open straightaway on swirling cloudlands,
And blue rocks at the depths of the seas,
And a kind of crust in mountains that is black,
Black pools in her eyes, when you disagree
With her, and a turbulent river in her arms.
The guiding principle, nobody is saying what
It is, but it is so obvious. The leading truth
That carries you through the day and night
Is that reality shall not brook
any magic interpretation.
You know this. As you lead yourself and the
Others down the path of ordinary mortals,
Where nobody’s obscure and human curses
Reach the room, the attic or the basement,
Where creation had its day,
where the rigged-up theater bloomed,
Where mystery was a chapter in the romance
Once, you thought, you conjured up, from the
Couch, rising up from a semi-exalted sleep--
But no, thought--it could not . . . hold sway.
The thunder arrives late, on the open
Porch, where we are living, for we are
Already assembled there. No, knowledge would
Be a transgression, it would kick this
Mood apart, and make some havoc in the brain,
And you will never be
willing in all of this
To include direct and lucid reference to
The God of light;
you are the unconfessed.
And you will never see a love that lasts
Forever, never hold her in your arms, for
You never made a promise,
and your memory is in tatters;
But it will be an act of kindness
that I say
Truth, yes, truth, and thought shall have
For you no salutary effect, at all, nor
Will they bother to ignore you, leave you,
You shall just slave in the seeming sun
Where the pale riders ride, ride by, ride
On, ride by you and on and back, for you
are next, and you can’t really move.
Destiny, which was a concept too, is
forestalled, by an act of grace--
And you are saved. You will fall, someday
In the open grave. It is already raining there,
White flowers come out of the rich earth.
That will be passion, and that the hour;
Then you will be accomplished,
some will say.
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