“To live illusionless, in the abandoned mine-
shaft of doubt, and still
mime illusions for others? A puzzle
for the maker who has thought
once too often too coldly.
Since I was more than a child
trying on a thousand faces
I have wanted one thing: to know
simply as I know my name
at any given moment, where I stand.
How much expense of time and skill
which might have set itself
to angelic fabrications! All merely
to chart one needle in the haymow?
Find yourself and you find the world?
Solemn presumption! Mighty Object
no one but itself has missed,
what’s lost, if you stay lost? Someone
ignorantly loves you – will that serve?
Shrug that off, and presto! -
the needle drowns in the haydust.
Think of the whole haystack -
a composition so fortuitous
it only looks monumental.
There’s always a straw twitching somewhere.
Wait out the long chance, and
your needle too could get nudged up
to the apex of that bristling calm.
Rusted, possibly. You might not want
to swear it was the Object, after all.
Time wears us old utopians.
I no longer think
’truth’ is the most beautiful of words.
Today, when I see ‘truthful’
written somewhere, it flares
like a white orchid in wet woods,
rare and grief-delighting, up from the page.
Sometimes, unwittingly even,
we have been truthful.
In a random universe, what more
exact and starry consolation?
Don’t think I think
facts serve better than ignorant love.
Both serve, and still our need mocks our gear.”
