In Season

(one last poem from the old notebooks, heavily edited)

1
We must stringently assemble
and protect in our discourse these frivolous,
subtle, seemingly trivial nuances,
which make each decisive difference
and also see each difference
from the opposite side
where it might not seem so decisive
or as different as are different eyes
opened wide to distinguish words and light

Next time, a quandary of instinct.



2
Last time was marked
“two tables over”
where there are no victims
except in their absence

In season
Trees articulate what’s near
or behind
Abuse of or is
a category that recurs

Abgrund, where the indifference of stones
opens a space for connections
a surface tension
on which floats
the submerged preworld

and which an I could only burst
but the void at the center joins
in language
as representative of this body, “bruised”

which today can only think of fucking
a distinct interior relatedness
while there are decisions to be made
and spread over the surface of
“a week” (a category
returning weekly, weakly)

Unnoticed playing into or out
one’s own hands
Time’s measured in order
to introduce unintended repetition
and consistency
into the field of habit
and change

just as language carves out the difference
between space and time, being and becoming,
memory, presence, anticipation

But that’s not all—in fact it’s impossible
to cover!
Shit!

The book, I think, is having a depressive effect on the table
The effect, thinks the table, is part of me