Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Mmmm, solid food is good--getting over a nasty cold, these past four days receding. Flu? Don't think so, but with my immune system, I get to feel so anyway.
Poem:
Things Indifferent
How can that drape-rod bear
to hang there the same, each day,
its white-globe finial
reflecting the same bulb, so.
The velvet folds
from it, I in bed
sick and in my sickness a health
I'll never understand, austere
as looking through the glancing
which we surround all our objects with.
The globe casts a shadow
same as always, the drapes let no
sun or draft
disturb my convalescence
which is also a sickening
desire to avoid the revelation
tormenting its way out through me,
small as light, as death:
and opposite the shadow a depthless bead
centered on the globe
which I stare at, or through, like a star
myself, blinking occasionally
though, my muscles now so sore
and my neck so insistently stiff
that I remain otherwise unmoved.
I can't really attest to its quality, because I wrote it in a state of hyper-conscious delirium. Which state can lead to a) good writing or b) bland writing (usually this one). I probably wouldn't be able to accurately assess it anyway, since I almost never can tell whether I've written anything worthwhile or not. Maybe the quality of my poems does vary (the most generous interpretation), or maybe they are all of similar quality i.e. middling or poor, and the distinctions I use to distinguish my poems are not so great as I make them. I say this with no special humility, by the way, sometimes I think I'm the bee's knees, too. Depends on the day.
I mean, I'm ambivalent about everything. Even being sick. It is awful to be unwell, but it is interesting and eye-opening in its own way and I know, how much understanding can one person stand (tell the truth but tell it slant, and all), but there is, in illness, an opposite-of-illness which one is unaware of during normal states of health. Not that I'd ever desire to feel as I too often do, but following the worst of the unpleasantness, I can see in it a purpose, one purgatorial, sometimes, and calm, others. The feeling afterwards is one of cleansing either way; that is, I usually feel better after an immune episode like this one. Though very tired. And not very coherent. I hope this is in some way understandable.
To my rice noodles.
Poem:
Things Indifferent
How can that drape-rod bear
to hang there the same, each day,
its white-globe finial
reflecting the same bulb, so.
The velvet folds
from it, I in bed
sick and in my sickness a health
I'll never understand, austere
as looking through the glancing
which we surround all our objects with.
The globe casts a shadow
same as always, the drapes let no
sun or draft
disturb my convalescence
which is also a sickening
desire to avoid the revelation
tormenting its way out through me,
small as light, as death:
and opposite the shadow a depthless bead
centered on the globe
which I stare at, or through, like a star
myself, blinking occasionally
though, my muscles now so sore
and my neck so insistently stiff
that I remain otherwise unmoved.
I can't really attest to its quality, because I wrote it in a state of hyper-conscious delirium. Which state can lead to a) good writing or b) bland writing (usually this one). I probably wouldn't be able to accurately assess it anyway, since I almost never can tell whether I've written anything worthwhile or not. Maybe the quality of my poems does vary (the most generous interpretation), or maybe they are all of similar quality i.e. middling or poor, and the distinctions I use to distinguish my poems are not so great as I make them. I say this with no special humility, by the way, sometimes I think I'm the bee's knees, too. Depends on the day.
I mean, I'm ambivalent about everything. Even being sick. It is awful to be unwell, but it is interesting and eye-opening in its own way and I know, how much understanding can one person stand (tell the truth but tell it slant, and all), but there is, in illness, an opposite-of-illness which one is unaware of during normal states of health. Not that I'd ever desire to feel as I too often do, but following the worst of the unpleasantness, I can see in it a purpose, one purgatorial, sometimes, and calm, others. The feeling afterwards is one of cleansing either way; that is, I usually feel better after an immune episode like this one. Though very tired. And not very coherent. I hope this is in some way understandable.
To my rice noodles.
