LXV
As if nothing but the real-infinite were
That beyond our comprehension was
the white ocean storm, I read, formulated somewhat
differently, in a passage of Kant About this
I have always known Also about the dark
point in the storm About the great and the small
I have been at the extremes, not just in a dream The one
that burst what little reality I owned
That was a long time ago What do I have now?
The social surrounds us, like an alien
reality; the resultant of a large number of vectors
is always alien; a trivial fact, so difficult
to understand This looking inward also becomes limited
But nothing is unaltered We are expert at change
As if we always had the brain of a child, even unto death
I hear the childish music I hear my own voice’s
song; its vocalics, its rasping, explosions
In this counterpoint What do I make of the social
I touch the lives of those closest to me Song touches
everyone, even in foreign languages We are differentiated
We shall not be integrals, not even in the alien eye of God
Society moves chaotically, toward simpler and simpler controls
where local variations cancel one another out It is
unstable; that is where our freedom lies; that which is beyond
all controls Like the oceanic storm, white Or black Everything
changes place with every other thing I feel your soft lips, smell your
scent, in an unparalleled familiarity You are not alien, or
in any case least strange of all We argue with each other
We make love with each other, softly We love each other The curtain
billows through the window, a stronger gust of wind opens a slit between them
The leaves strike one another, the panicles of the grasses move A flower fly
stands still in the air A distant bird is audible again Which
bird? Impossible to hear! It is part of life alien to us
At twilight the song thrush sang Softly, softly In fragments of
the rhythms of Mozart, what resembles them Now several birds A warbler?
The small gray bird down by the bridge? Among the shimmering blue dragonflies. . .
Yesterday I played the flute for the dead woman Down toward the streaming
water—
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