BEGINNING WITH A PHRASE FROM SIMONE WEIL / 117
A PANIC THAT CAN STILL COME UPON ME / 121
UNTITLED AMHERST SPECTER / 135
A TELESCOPE PROTECTS ITS VIEW / 136
VINCENT, HOMESICK FOR THE LAND OF PICTURES / 143
SATURDAY AND ITS FESTOONED POTENTIAL / 152
THIS TRIP AROUND THE SUN IS EXPENSIVE / 184
TRADITION & THE INDIVISIBLE TALENT / 195
HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT / 206
MODERN ADVENTURES AT SEA / 216
FRAGMENT (TO THE READER) / 221
The world contains consciousness as well as atoms—and the one must be written down as just as essential as the other …
WILLIAM JAMES
FROM
PERIPLUM, AND OTHER POEMS
SONG OF THE INTERIOR BEGIN
Some sky of hydraulic
spring Some season ever
So the tree for even
a twig O branch O earth
there is too (psalm)
Neither a pool nor
a crown And day spills
to where is O water
Begin! Begin! So sing
of lever Are eyes
shy? O iris O onyx
Into blouse of
Air go there!
PERIPLUM
Put your map right with the world
The person who knows where
has made an accurate study
of here
As to know
implies a different reading
Somewhere
faith enters
and must be pinned and sighted
A church tower is good for reference
but losing ground
Still
satellites orbiting the earth
track a true arc
but perhaps too grand
for everyday distances
And never mind about the bewilderment
“I’m at sea”
BLUE PETER
AFTER JASPER JOHNS
To describe a logic of sight
pull the surface onto target and
arrive at zero aperture. Then
fluctuate to a face, reproduced
in serial format, superimposed
upon marginal pedestrians,
traversing a polarity of earth.
The axis here is askew, perhaps
unsettling, the way physical
equilibrium