4163. KINDLING, Pt. 2 (Meditation)

KINDLING, Pt 2

(Meditation)

And you shall have, you shall touch. Mankind yet

walks the water's edge  -  cooking all his flesh and

fowl and eating now his nuts and berries too. All is

new : it can be the entrance to a new and different

world, and shall be. Look now! The rain is shrieking

down upon the ancient metal, and the old world, it

passes away. And only now  -  as I see the past

stretch far behind me  -  a paraphrasing Ezra Pound

I am  -  I realize that such business, the business of

an artist here, is to make humanity aware of itself.

-

Ah! The truest Hell is to stand alone, and be alone,

and live alone, and die alone; (others say the opposite,

and I hear them grown in their lottery crowdings). The

masses, all huddled, are cramping the walkway. Instead,

yes, such a camaraderie may be a Hell as well. So little,

really does it matter now to me. I am dead of the world.

-

I smell a smoke in the air  -  but do not know from

where. And the drips of rain, I hear them chatter upon

the metal roofplate over this outdoor porch  -  a sixth

grade memory of yesteryear now branching out to

take me in. I want to inhabit that yearning, but no

I will not. My mission, instead, is in writing, and

speaking not. There are so many harbingers of

final things to come : the crooked timber of

self-interest, it is cut, and dies away.

I live in a horror of Death to come.

-

All the isolation, all the loneliness, of a desert

place. Look again, the rain is shrieking upon

ancient metal, and the old world passes away.

-

More like a schooner that heads out to sea,

more like a sun, a nothing that really is  -  I

abide you and await commingling : 'I've never

prayed much, and can't just start now.' The man

on the blanket at the corner of Grove keeps

repeating that over and over in the 100 degree

heat. I throw him a dollar and say 'repeat.'

-

My doggerel is your doctrine, though that has

happened I do not know. My own chest heaves,

even though I become tired of breathing. The sky

plays light with air; some ancient childhood game

played out on fields of love and valor.