Sunday, 9 February 2014

35. Starting Again at the Basics with WCW



For What and Who
OK then is
           a poem just a machine made out of words
           not rather a prayer submitted to the unknown god
           – no not Paul’s, that lying English bully’s –
           but the real one who only does not exist?


Joy
walking sunnily thru
ordinary mess &
rubble crunches


The Return
Haie! Haie! – see they return!
              the fleet-footed!
              the children

              see them return
              the end of voyaging
              always in return
              the familiar close
              no escape, no healing


Joy
we run
       backwards & forwards
       backwards & forwards
       backwards & forwards
       backwards & forwards
                           saying


La Gioia
Le cose fresche! – com’ il piacere quotidiano chi cresce


How Familiar
Aren’t we all then children?
– certainly few of us adult now


For What and Who
“There is no self undefiled by experience, no self unmediated in the perceptual situation; instead there is a world and the person is in it.”
Hejinian, p 203

Hard Knocks
That wound, that rawness and inadequacy, may be consciousness.


How Familiar
sad & ludicrous creatures that we are, pets, or maybe just larvae, of some inconceivable & grotesque grace


How Familiar
Your family
Your fantasy
Your feast
           – it’s burning
             & they
             are all
             laughing
                      together


1 comment:

  1. For What and Who: “A poem is a small (or large) machine made out of words” William Carlos Williams “Author’s Introduction” [to The Wedge}, Selected Essays (New Directions, 1969), p 256.
    The Return: Ezra Pound, “The Return”, Collected Shorter Poems (Faber and Faber, 1968), p 85.
    but you knew these already I'm sure

    ReplyDelete