In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987–2011

Hypostasis & New Year

175 H Y P O S TA S I S & N E W Y E A R For why am I afraid to sing the fundamental shape of awe should I now begin to sing the silvered back of the winter willow spear the sparkling agate blue would this blade and this sky free me to speak intransitive lack— the vowels themselves free Of what am I afraid of what lies in back of me of day these stars scattered as far as the I what world and wherefore will it shake free why now in the mind of an afternoon is a daisy for a while flagrant and alive 176 Then what of night of hours’ unpredicated bad luck and the rot it clings to fathomless on the far side in winter dark Hey shadow world when a thing comes back comes back unseen but felt and no longer itself what then what silver world mirrors tarnished lenses what fortune what fate and the forms not themselves but only itself the sky by water and wind shaken I am born in silvered dark Of what am I to see these things between myself and nothing between the curtain and the stain between the hypostatic scenes of breathing and becoming the thing I see are they not the same Things don’t look good on the street today beside a tower in a rusting lot one is a condition the other mystery even this afternoon light so kind and nourishing a towering absence vibrating air 177 Shake and I see pots from old shake and I see cities anew I see robes shake I see desert I see the farthing in us all the ghost of day the day inside night as tones decay and border air it is the old songs and the present wind I sing and say I love the unknown sound in a word Mother where from did you leave me on the sleeve of a dying word of impish laughter in the midst my joy I compel and confess open form my cracked hinged picture doubled I can’t remember now if I made a pact with the devil when I was young when I was high on a sidewalk I hear “buy a sweatshirt?” and think buy a shirt from the sweat of children hell I’m just taking a walk in the sun in a poem and this sound caught in the most recent coup ...