Tending as always
toward tomorrow
and tomorrow—toward gravity
and its hugest superlatives
but also the infinitesimal point of a place, marked with a bold
x, where the world ends, or so
we've been told;
we sometimes find instead where we tread—a slight
translucent muse
whose
simple song
at first
is not but disappointing levity—a nursery rhyme! we cry,
a sort of cheap birthday
party tune—
meant to accompany that space of time, we think
in our ponderous graceless mood,
between the bored now and
the dark time when all shall become as smoke
under our very noses, after
our fervid but still
uncompleted visions have been subsumed
and what's left of them now enveloped
in gummy sugar and sticky laughter.
Nonetheless,
the music plays on, and gradually
we realize—
we know the words already, having
learned them all
by heart when we were small.
And what then—
of gravity
after all?
Surely a few distractions—a white confection and a few
friends and close relations
are not the heaviest burdens to assume. And as
the lingering smoke in our nostrils
continues to curl, it compels us
to recall
and to compare—another simple song,
we dimly seem to have heard
or read about somewhere—
something—regarding ashes and dust
and so-on, until suddenly
that is to say,
eventually—we hear each song conclude, only
to rewind and start over,
as tomorrow becomes
today, re-steeped once again
in the burnt and dead
leaves which we just
very nearly discarded,
and we remember that here
on a perfect sphere,
every point
is both—the end of all things
and absolutely nowhere.
And it is then at last
that we find ourselves
free to give up
and simply let loose our own music
without that unwieldy burden—of ownership,
and the song we make then
is a slender
little cellophane thing, but it nonetheless runs
wild in our minds, chiming
out more and more strongly
with each new
repetition of its chorus—
repetition of its chorus—
Be not a prophet.
And leave off desire
And dignity and class.
What does your day
And leave off desire
And dignity and class.
What does your day
to day life require?
Tell us—only of that.
Tell us—only of that.
