THE END OF TIME

Maybe all along 

we were 

all wrong about it—

overly 

dramatic,

or else, 

too clever by two- 

over-half.

Maybe it's not all over

(that's too climactic).

Maybe, instead, it's

the 1st of Never 

on the calendar—

at last 

that day has dawned 

which will not ever set.

But we are so used 

to the practice 

of patience—

of just hanging on 

and staying 

strong til tomorrow—

that we're all too contented 

to sit

and to wait

even though it's getting 

awfully late—

or should be, 

anyway.

BITTER MEMORY

There are, of course, always

those sensible buildings 

to which 

daily access

is granted millions.

Then, there are

the particular places—

a ramshackle cabin

high in the mountains, say—

whose paths are passable only 

intermittently. 

And last of all, there's 

that one empty palace—

with its gilt towers 

and buttresses frozen

at formidable right angles

and its piercing 

white interiors, all

excruciatingly polished—

which, having glimpsed  

only once, 

you have ever since permitted 

to secretly exist,

but which 

you'd never dare wish 

for one second

to reinhabit.

WISDOM IS THAT KNOWLEDGE WHOSE BURDEN WE NEVER WANTED

Scarcity 

may always be the

archetypal fear;

But the truth is, 

there is far too much 

here to defend.

Time is so ample, 

in some sense it 

never advances;

and the sky, always 

so far away—what 

are the chances 

there won't always be more 

to mistrust 

in those immortals

whose intelligence 

was too lavish 

to be blighted by death 

and yet, too humble

to now seem quite

foolish instead?

LEARNING TO SPEAK

It's not an intelligence—

it's something that happens 

to your entire body 

all at once;

language 

is the grail itself—

an inexhaustible radiance, 

which, up close, could 

burn all your clothes off.

You forget 

about getting things

a bit mixed up;

you remember only enough 

to know you must walk 

into the furnace of words—

naked 

and nameless,

from the gutter, 

to the galaxy—

but always willingly, 

as if any other 

choice existed. 

AMATEUR CARTOGRAPHY

Repellent as it looks 

from this 

location, it would be 

far better 

to stop 

and carve a stiff grid across 

the top of your life

than to not. 

After all—

at some point, 

the coordination 

of pain 

must begin 

to protect against 

the loss,

and let's face it—

and you are going to get lost 

a lot.

PREPONDERANCES

If what Nature 

just cannot stand is 

a vacuum, 

how come a man 

most abhors 

her redundancies—

earth's messy multiplicities

which breed free

endurance, 

or guaranteed 

survival of the most 

blessedly anonymous, 

or, worst of all,

the sophistication pre-

supposed of the oblique? 

Instead of trusting 

in processes, why is he 

repulsed 

by the repetitions

which console against

chronic incoherence?

Do he fear 

these varieties 

obscure the one angle 

from which he both

views the truth clear—

and survives it? 

TWO CONFLICTING IMPULSES

Like a beaten 

drum, or some hapless planet 

bombarded by comets,

I guess you have 

no choice but 

to abide all the torment,

of this moment, all its tiresome 

insistence and it's chronic 

aggravation;

for the sensation 

you experience is no 

technical problem, 

but rather, a tectonic one:

for durability's sake,

beneath topsides of skin, 

the meat of you really is 

made out of plates—

whose main job is 

less to contain 

than to grind at each other 

continuously.