Potential Random XIV
An aging house, well yes he
understands that—but suddenly
down it falls.
And he is in a garden.
And there are animals.
And he is in a garden and
there are trees.
And there are stones on
fire.
And, well, he walks
up and down on them.
But this is
the Hebrew and, not
a conjunction, merely some un-
translatable particle.
Cenotaph (there is no
body here).
(Somehow I can’t imagine
digging a separate grave for the heart.)
And everything is cast
down—plants, animals,
garden, stones, fire, Tyre
with its river called
Litany—along with himself.
The living organism, he
hears, is a
symbol of the psyche.
Thinking is inward seeing.
So Wittgenstein thought, and also
Swedenborg.
Die, well yes he knows he
has to, but thinks of it as being
killed—or killing.
As if at a distance—he
lives, not in
life, but across from it.
And it comes to pass.
And he tries to distinguish
life and its contents.
And they wheel around him, the cars, as
if he were standing still.
Copyright Credit: Keith Waldrop, "Potential Random XIV" from Selected Poems. Copyright © 2016 by Keith Waldrop. Reprinted by permission of Omnidawn Publishing.
Source: Selected Poems (Omnidawn Publishing, 2016)