Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

I wandered lonely as a Cloud
   That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
   A host of golden Daffodils;
Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
   And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
   Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
   Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:—
A Poet could not but be gay
   In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie
   In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
   Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.

Do you still believe in borders now?  

Birds soar over your maps and walls, and always have.     

You might have watched how the smoke from your own fires  

travelled on wind you couldn’t see    

                                            wafting over the valley

and up and over the hills and over the next valley and the next hill.

Did you not hear the animals howl and sing?   

Or hear the silence of the animals no longer singing?   

Now you know what it is to be afraid.  

You think this is a dream?  It is not

a dream.    You think this is a theoretical question?  

What do you love more than what you imagine is your singular life?   

The water grows clearer.  The swans settle and float there.    

Are you willing to take your place in the forest again?    to become loam and bark

to be a leaf falling. from a great height.  to be the worm who eats the leaf

and the bird who eats the worm?    Look at the sky: are you

willing to be the sky again?  

                                              You think this lesson is 

too hard for you    You want the time-out to end.  You want

to go to the movies as before, to sit and eat with your friends.

It can end now, but not in the way you imagine    You know

the mind that has been talking to you for so long—the mind that

can explain everything?    Don’t listen.

 

You were once a citizen of a country called I Don’t Know.

Remember the burning boat that brought you there?   Climb in.

Sometimes when you start to ramble
or rather when you feel you are starting to ramble
you will say Well, now I’m rambling
though I don’t think you ever are.
And if you ever are I don’t really care.
And not just because I and everyone really 
at times falls into our own unspooling
—which really I think is a beautiful softness
of being human, trying to show someone else
the color of all our threads, wanting another to know 
everything in us we are trying to show them—
but in the specific, 
in the specific of you
here in this car that you are driving
and in which I am sitting beside you
with regards to you 
and your specific mouth
parting to give way
to the specific sweetness that is
the water of your voice 
tumbling forth—like I said 
I don’t ever really mind
how much more 
you might keep speaking
as it simply means 
I get to hear you 
speak for longer. 
What was a stream 
now a river.

^{(after Stephen Hawking)}

Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity

we once were?

so compact nobody

needed a bed, or food or money—

nobody hiding in the school bathroom

or home alone

pulling open the drawer

where the pills are kept.

For every atom belonging to me as good

Belongs to you.   Remember?

There was no   Nature.    No

 them.   No tests

to determine if the elephant

grieves her calf    or if

the coral reef feels pain.    Trashed

oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French;

would that we could wake up   to what we were

—when we were ocean    and before that

to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was

liquid and stars were space and space was not

at all—nothing

before we came to believe humans were so important

before this awful loneliness.

Can molecules recall it?

what once was?    before anything happened?

No I, no We, no one. No was

No verb      no noun

only a tiny tiny dot brimming with

is is is is is

All   everything   home

The seed is a wound in the form of a little girl buried alive. Buried inside me the sol de la terre. What do I remember of last night’s dream, that the children were painting a mural that spread beyond the surface of the wall. There was a blue spirit a benevolent ghost with no eyes that hung over the children like a cloud reaching out its arms. Did the image fatigue me? I was fatigued by everything. There were space chairs facing the walls and I kept falling asleep. 

Cry at my library carrel. Cry when I step off the bus. A crystal-clear sky over midtown and I no longer have the energy (will?) to masticate subjective experience. Wrote nothing about the breakup. It’s as though nothing actually happens to me. 

I wanted a quiet life—to keep the casket. They don’t even notice I’m half-here, while the other half lives in the crypt. Go down to the grotto with your headlamp and crowbar. Release the girl lost and afraid. I’m not here. No one touches her. Reserve a little for myself. To self-witness. But what’s become of my mind there is no world. What did I want to say to him—that there’s a crypt-shaped seed I show to no one: it is my fate. The impossibility of making a day, leaking one’s soul for want of an angel. The night was forever. And pearls of light rained down on me I lost myself in the lonely expedition toward the center of everything I would become: nothing there’s no time but love was a thing hanging in the air at night when I’d stalk the streets with my heart in my mouth. 

Bury my heart in the haute mer. Find me not I’ve flushed it to spare myself the humiliation of being seen. She’s nowhere to be found or maybe there’s a casket bobbing on the ocean with a note inside that says, “The secret to survival is to disappear.”