Monday, April 23, 2012

3594. HAPPENSTANCE

HAPPENSTANCE
I am not the one to enter your cavernous
atmosphere : there is plenty of room to breath
and room to sit. Outside your crusted window,
I am watching Van Cortlandt Manor and all the
forms which pass. Like some weaver's awkward
abstract art, being viewed backwards and from
behind, I recognize little and recall less.  All I 
can think of is the manner of your leaving.
-
A fire truck seems rushing by. Its noise
enters by itself some strange Doppler Effect,
dropping and fading both as it passes. My
own mind, noticing little, makes no sense
of what occurs. Instead, far off, I am thinking
of the Delaware River, miles and miles away.
-
Do you understand, then, how this mind works?
It tears itself apart in trying. Every offer, every
word, every something heard rings forth a
hundred bells pealing of something other.
Something different or far away. My own
disconcertment becomes painful to me.
-
Beyond the passage of a window glass
two hundred years old and wavy and blurred,
another world which has dawned and stayed,
the one into which I am stuck, in place, for
now, presents its pressure and place as mine.
I can do nothing, really, but accept this
blunderbuss, assume its stance, and
continue on, going forth to
who knows what.

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