words swell
like the earth at first
taste of spring

set them down
like buds on a bough
like shoots of green
grass in the muck
come back

in a day
and all is well

in a month
your ways are parting
like petals of a flower
or blooms on weeds

come winter
you won't recognize
this tree
nor find that dead leaf
down in its snowy bed

words come and swell
like a heart or a man
drop them down like rain
put your thumb on the garden hose
and spray the soft earth

or drop them soft as snow
mound them up for a white veil
wrap them round for dead man's clothes
become inscrutable to your own self

At night before I fall asleep
I think of all the things I wish I hadn't done
I remember them clearly in sharp detail. Some I forget
until I am waiting to sleep
then, when I can't escape they will come
fully formed, locked in me forever, colored in the hues of regret. I whisper
to the dark "please forgive me."

I know that you won't hear, that it won't matter because
that me doesn't know he will travel back through time to that moment
again.

Reading Proust, or I suppose most prose, is like riding a bicycle. You need to achieve a certain speed to keep your balance and get anywhere. The words draw tight in the centrifuge wheels of the mind, and the meaning is stratified out, demarcated, and the mind's rider is free to experience the text.

Maybe that's the problem with criticism. It's just too slow.

"After a ceratin age our memories are so intertwined with one another that what we are thinking of, the book we are reading, scarcely matters any more. We have put somehting of ourselves everywhere, everything is fertile, everything is dangerous, and we can make discoveries no less precious than in Pascal's Pensees in an advertisement about soap."

Proust, Recherche v.5

Aubade

in aurora’s mist
with the darkness of the night seeping up from the ground

you wake
like the sun
scorching the mist of dreams


I had held you like tenebrous arctic skies
inebriated in your shimmering wind
swirling along magnetic lines
I called you Aurora

you were mine while
I held you open-eyed


we sleep
our quiet inspiration a cresting like the morning

slow expiration parts
our lips,
breath twined
milky in the cold
as morning mist

lit like an aurora in the first light


you wake
like the sun forgetful
of night's morning

I've been sort of re-entering the world of politics lately. Now that I live with cable, I can watch the U.S. Senate from time to time, as well as various functions of government on the state level. I have a goal, informally, of at some point understanding power. Or at least of feeling like I am immune to its rhetoric.

My main difficulty so far has been that it seems the rhetoric of power most easily elicits three variant responses: agreement, disagreement within the context of opposing rhetoric (also a type of agreement), and disgust. All three of these responses are build on the common base of an inability to penetrate or completely understand what lies behind the rhetoric. What lies behind is, presumably, the structures of power, and power itself.

Are the structures of power different from the rhetoric of power? Probably not completely. But I think that it is likely that there is some disconnect between the two. For example, there are undoubtedly situations wherein the rhetoric of power is not caused by the structures of power. This is quite clear when one watches the Senate. The rhetoric of power, or so it seems, is little more, at times, than ideological banter. So, if the structures of power have dictated the results of a vote before the discussion of the amendment, the rhetoric of the discussion is at some level of disconnect from the pure struggle of power already undergone, if such a thing were conceivable. (As for whether there are instances where the structures of power are not caused by the rhetoric of power, it might seem unlikely; however, we shall consider the rhetoric of power to be less universal, more superficial, and basically defined as the rhetoric used by those in power to which those over whom they have power have intentionally been given access.)

Watching the Senate proceedings reveals that the rhetoric is often aimed as much at the people, through the news media, as it is at the senator addressed. That's only natural, I suppose; however, the news media can only quote the rhetoric, as it is the whole, more or less, of the proceeding. The media is unlikely to allow itself to attempt to ferret out the pure power relationships. Especially since the senators themselves may not be completely aware of them.

Which raises perhaps the most perplexing question. Do politicians believe themselves, and does it matter if and when they do? My brother has mentioned to me that ideas don't exist. If ideas don't exist, you're left with politicians themselves, I suppose.

If so, then to understand power one need not watch the senate. One would be best, I think, to attempt to understand power by understanding oneself. For it would never be possible for "even the President of the United States" to "stand naked" with all his true motivations before you. Or any other politician. The most likely person you are going to be able to scrutinize is yourself, because you have the most information about that person and his or her relationships (some say every relationship is a matter of power). But, you might say, all that information is subjective and may be false. True, but the ability to see through your own lies is most likely the secret to understanding power. In other words, forget about it.

The poet is like a litteratus reading in the time of Augustine. We are like those who would listen at the door. But, perhaps we think he is simply talking to himself. We mistake the words for his own, we mistake him for a soliloquist or a lunatic or an author at dictation.