Tuesday, July 02, 2013

one's golden age behind one

there is a time of late evening
out on the street
i believe the world will seem strange
in its quiet the stillness of a city
which is an active stillness
and it begins to seem as
if you are supposed to come to a
point at which you have grown comfortable

with each of these things such as
flies clustering the light
by the picnic table in
the park
but even more, with the parked cars
and the manicured lawns
and yet the barking dog which gets its
"shaddap"

it is not that this is supposed to be "it"
but it is it, made in the way
of smilarities. look at it this way
what is it that you are, floating along this imaginary street
the real thing...even that you cannot answer
now. the very idea is disturbing
like the wooded part along the dark walk.
the price of releasing
the hope of some deep, resounding truth
is not so very much, after all
you must admit. and there are
many almost things, but of these
the most real falsity is a thing
alive in itself. This makes
no sense, but is true
again and again.

at some point it is assumed
that you function pretty well.
that this requires
an ignorance of the strangeness of
bats or by what process they developed
their echo-location is not problematic;
that, equally, your own blindness and saggy
skin might make you an aeronaut is a conceit
that has no particular resonance in this dark;
the game is gobbling the insects, but even this
fact is not well known. hard work has its own
utility, it can't be denied, and just one small example
is the calloused hand, useful for so many tasks
precisely by lack of sensation to any task.
in this case, if i were to say your skin
feels like the ear of a yearling doe when she
stands erect and flaring, with the dew clinging to the tips
of her perfect, slender legs and the water of the pond, in the early morning mist, trembling
from the recent touch of her lips

if i were to say that
the truth of it is equivalent to the manicured
lawn of the split-level on the corner except
this is the truth
which which we should be
becoming comfortable
though such statues secretly make one raise a fist

but i wouldn't say it now
such a thing. yet i will believe those things
all of them
like i believe the stillness of an evening on a city street
like i believe the quiet by the distant sounds of cars and trucks
all the golden age behind one by photograph, memorable, statuesque.

though in every age people after all did live, not knowing if it were golden.

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