I've spent my life 
in a lone mechanical whine, 

this combustion far off.

How fathomless to be 
embedded in glacial ice,

what piece of self hiding there.

I am not sure about meaning 
but understand the wave.

No more Novalis out loud.

No Juan de la Cruz singing 
"I do not die to die."

No solstice, midhaven, midi, nor twilight.

No isn't it amazing, no 
none of that.

To crow, to crown, to cry, to crumble.

The trees the air warms into 
a bright something

a bluish nothing into 

clicks and pops 
bursts and percussive runs.

I come with my asymmetries,
my untutored imagination.

Heathenish, 

my homespun vision 
sponsored by the winter sky.

Then someone said nether,
someone whirr.

And if I say the words
will you know them?

Is there world?
Are they still calling it that?

From Threshold Songs by Peter Gizzi. Copyright © 2012 by Peter Gizzi. Reprinted with permission of Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved.