In Itself Unknown

In Itself Unknown

A meditation on the thing itself, the mind, in other words, a thing in its state of being and of being known as a kind of fiction, a story of itself.

That it thinks not and I lend it an ear is a fallacy unproven that the Universe itself is as unconscious as I am. An eye I posit in dreams, below the surface everyone,

where sea beings loan of themselves but have no hands, as we know them, to build with,

so mere mortals are the next best command.

We all agree collectively that we are awful, dark, cunning, giving nothing away until in our ignorance, lashing out we are truly poor.

In the bowl of the imprisoned beggar, the Lord of the least makes holy the presence of One much despised and hidden.

How could it be that one most high would lay so low, be so timid, broken, shy, bereft of self and of appeasement begging as pain for relief or embodiment in another form, be she kindred, selfsame or foreign.

So goes the incarnation.

Nothing really left as it is over but the strained voices and parentheses that missed the ship.

The man still strung up on the cross, dead.

Ambitious perhaps but the years have tallied on and toil must raise the crops

for a “smart” market.

To preach of oblivion now is as common place as the air is clear and has form as the sphere of atmosphere surrounding the world.

The damn world again,

things in themselves shifting over time, saying everyone’s name and moving on.

Or saying nothing and staying.

Mute as the clay soil in the hole, cleaved by the pick, tan mostly, cold, not quite red.

We who would read it aloud only mumble over our time and each other, leaving the overwhelming majority of the vast to bide its time, seeking out all others with its silences.

An endlessness of silences is no inspiration or inhalation of the voice with its word,

its treatise on what is heard in such familiar and raw confines as to be quite nearly forgotten,

the taken for granted curtain of our scene, the quatrain left blank, the forms as the bard says

of things unknown.

To say again, to sleep its rambling opus or chant to the chimes of morning prayer.

A little abode, habitation, home.

Proud despot moved away.

Army, scorched earth.

Spring is a hand grenade of green for minds reeling in the substance of some

flight of nuance, pleasure and séance.

On the stage she eliminated first cause and last act and it fell to the graces to name

the sun’s original mentor in the blazing continuance of the dark to be and to be again

as if eternally asking and being turned away

as if self-sufficient, needing no one,

but so desperate in being known to know

as the numbers trail a tie to infinity.

Rolf's Poems and Pictures

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