Friday, December 10, 2004
Preliminary Clasp
Gold in the eye, gold born every day. Worth.
What a water so fire to touch it
is to be drunk in called noble can’t,
with its pure appetite, touch, or
what dug from the earth is refined,
grows nothing, is soft, is reflective—
in the vague way waking is
sleeping, only backwards—of the partial
hope. Either one, I think, is why
worth. That is, that it lasts, that
we would imagine it, ourselves,
dawn-born,
buy ourselves some time, lose
ourselves in time
though not as the alchemists
are always just claiming
to have taught you, spent
as if peace, like a tendon tensed against
the eventual past out of mind
long enough to elongate
back into itself,
were a species of thought,
as if gold were the gold
of a mango
served under a terebinth tree.
Gold in the eye, gold born every day. Worth.
What a water so fire to touch it
is to be drunk in called noble can’t,
with its pure appetite, touch, or
what dug from the earth is refined,
grows nothing, is soft, is reflective—
in the vague way waking is
sleeping, only backwards—of the partial
hope. Either one, I think, is why
worth. That is, that it lasts, that
we would imagine it, ourselves,
dawn-born,
buy ourselves some time, lose
ourselves in time
though not as the alchemists
are always just claiming
to have taught you, spent
as if peace, like a tendon tensed against
the eventual past out of mind
long enough to elongate
back into itself,
were a species of thought,
as if gold were the gold
of a mango
served under a terebinth tree.
