[Music]
"Soonest Mended" barely tolerated, living on the margin
in our technological society, we were always having to be rescued
on the brink of destruction like heroines in Orlando Furioso
before it was time to start all over again there would be thunder in the
bushes a rustling of coils and Angelica, in the Ingres
painting, was considering the colorful but small monster near her
toe as though wondering whether forgetting the whole thing might not in
the end be the only solution and then there always came in time when
Happy Hooligan in his rusted green automobile came plowing down the course, just
to make sure everything was O.K. only by that time we were in
another chapter and confused about how to receive this
latest piece of information was it information? weren't
we rather acting this out for someone else's benefit, thoughts in a mind
with room enough and to spare for our little problems so they began to seem,
our daily quandary about food and the rent and bills to be paid?
to reduce all this to a small variant, to step free at last, minuscule
on the gigantic plateau— this was our ambition: to
be small and clear and free. alas, the summer's energy wanes quickly,
a moment and it is gone and no longer may we make the necessary
arrangements, simple as they are our star was brighter perhaps
when it had water in it now there is no question even of that, but only
of holding on to the hard earth so as not to get thrown off,
with an occasional dream, a vision: a robin flies across
the upper corner of the window, you brush your hair away
and cannot quite see or a wound will flash against the sweet faces of
the others, something like: this is what you wanted to hear, so why
did you think of listening to something else? we are all talkers
it is true but underneath the talk lies the moving and not wanting to be moved, the loose
meaning, untidy and simple like a threshing floor. these then were some hazards of the course,
yet though we knew the course was hazards and nothing else,
It was still a shock when, almost a quarter of a century later,
the clarity of the rules dawned on you for the first time.
they were the players, and we who had struggled at the game
were merely spectators, though subject to its vicissitudes
and moving with it out of the tearful stadium, borne on shoulders at last.
night after night this message returns repeated in the flickering bulbs of the sky
raised past us, taken away from us yet ours over and over until
the end that is past truth the being of our sentences in
the climate that fostered them not ours to own, like a book,
but to be with, and sometimes to be without, alone and desperate
but the fantasy makes it ours a kind of fence-sitting
raised to the level of an aesthetic ideal. these were moments years
solid with reality faces nameable events, kisses, heroic acts,
but like the friendly beginning of a geometrical progression
not too reassuring as though meaning could be cast aside some day
when it had been outgrown better, you said, to stay cowering
lke this in the early lessons, since the promise of learning
is a delusion and I agreed adding that tomorrow with all of the sense of what had
already been learned that the learning process is extended in this way, so that from this standpoint
none of us ever graduates from college for time is an emulsion, and
probably thinking not to grow up is the brightest kind of maturity
for us, right now at any rate. and you see, both of us were right, though nothing has somehow come to nothing the avatars
of our conforming to the rules and living around the home have made well
in a sense good citizens of us brushing the teeth and all
that and learning to accept the charity of the hard
moments as they are doled out for this is action this not
being sure this careless preparing sowing the seeds crooked in the furrow
making ready to forget and always coming back to the mooring of starting
out that day so long ago
