In the book The World As I Found It, I should also have to report on my body and say which members are subject to my will, etc. For this is a way of isolating the subject, or rather of showing that in an important sense there is no such thing as the subject; for it would be the one thing that could not come into this book.
-Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914 - 1916, entry for 23 May 1915
At sunset, light is diffused upwards behind the low hills. River mist hangs under low cloud at the horizon, back-lit in a sequence of colours: blue, blue-yellow, yellow, then orange, fading back to yellow. The rest of the sky moves slowly to a bottle-greeny-grey. The light yellow on white surfaces, but white to the eye. Muted purple grey the sky; the sun surrounded by a flattened oval moving through all the salmon-pinks.
Hans Hofmann, Golden It Glows into a New Day (1965) oil on canvas, 50&3/4 ins x 42 ins.
aei kai ton helion genesthai
(even the sun is perpetually coming into being)
Herakleitos, quoted by Plotinus, Enneads II.i.2
Not much air to expel from between the pages; grasp the words as they run for it
[Tony Baker, in a letter]
—as something which has been thrown into the world it loses itself in the"world" [?? Heidegger]
a mature, adult grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) slowly and meticulously beheading the florets, and eating their sticky bases, just to one side of the sign Rhodo elizabeth. Birdsong from the shadows, suburban park.
Past the small wood behind Coombe Place; along the ridge to Blackcap; under the Ditchling Beacon; down to Clayton Windmills in a downpour. My oldest nephew does this walk the other way, a year or two later.
in winter known by purplish-brown club-shaped buds, narrowed at the base, set alternately along dark brown twigs. After pollination the female catkins develop into soft green round cones, usually visible all year round as spent cones hang on the tree for a year or more. Often repeatedly cut back, they can appear bushy with twiggy branches; exceptionally they become tall trees. The bark is dark grey, almost black, with a plated texture.
IN THE CORNER OF TIME
the alder revealed pledges to itself in silence,
on the earth's back, handspan-broad,
crouches the shot-through
lung,
at the field's edge the winged hour
pulls the snowmote
out of its won stone eye,
ribbons of light inflame me,
faults in the crown flicker.
Paul Celan, from Lichtzwang [Lightforce]
There's a small winter landscape of a leafless wood in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Although it is by Pissarro, it is entirely undistinguished save for an unexplained and inexplicable violet streak running at forty-five degrees from the horizontal from the top left centre to the bottom right of the image area. Perhaps it is intended to be a trick of late winter light, but it does not run parallel to the angle the light falls in elsewhere. I have never seen this picture reproduced, though I have not looked for it very thoroughly. Wanting to check if my recollection was accurate, I revisited the museum, which had already closed for the day.
a single magpie in an absurdly blue September morning sky flies over a small enfilade of trees in trees in which it roosts; the white of its feathers glows, the black of the scapulae indian-ink on the blue behind it as it passes from view.
An jenem Tag im blauen Mond September...the moon not swollen, the sun not fitful but brilliant.
The evening star floats, rides in the top of an oak
I am unsure of the identity of either term in the equation
Sinn und Bedeutung
David Rees
A Small Hawk Deciding
Sourcing GMH in urbe
Crossing one of the flyovers approaching the Limehouse link, I saw a small hawk deciding when to drop. Approaching the Limehouse link, I saw the traffic had stopped. I saw when to drop in the inside lane. The traffic had stopped. I saw the reason. There had been an accident in the inside lane and an ambulance arrived. The reason there had been an accident? Unclear. I saw someone dead and an ambulance arrived when the traffic cleared. I became unclear. I saw someone dead crossing one of the flyovers when the traffic cleared. I became a small hawk deciding.
Crossing one of the flyovers carrying the traffic approaching the Limehouse link, I saw, above cover, a small hawk deciding, spotting sudden stillness, when to drop. Carefully approaching the Limehouse link, I saw, spotting sudden stillness, the traffic had stopped. I saw this was when to drop carefully in the inside lane. Too quickly the traffic had stopped. I saw this was the reason. There had been an accident, a car in the inside lane too quickly, and an ambulance arrived later. The reason there had been an accident? a car? Unclear. I saw someone dead, and angels, and an ambulance arrived. Later, when the traffic cleared, I became suddenly calm, unclear. I saw someone dead, and angels. Crossing one of the flyovers carrying the traffic. When the traffic cleared, I became suddenly calm, a small hawk deciding above cover.
Carrying the traffic above cover, spotting sudden stillness, carefully spotting sudden stillness. This was carefully, Too quickly this was a car, too quickly. Later, a car, and angels. Later. Suddenly calm, and angels carrying the traffic, suddenly calm above cover.
Richard Price
Why I'm an Expressive Abstractionist
Because everyone is
Because America does not need me
Because America has not yet Earned My Love
Because I'm fond of the decorative arts
even endpapers
Because I love faces
in general
in particular
Because Hélion Before
is better after After
Because nobody is
Because I'm also as it were
an Abstract Expressionist
Because dribble's better than drivel
but still dreadfully drab
Because Apollinaire
made the first moon landing
Because beach buggies
are just dinky
Because
of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz
A bit more consideration
after César Vallejo
Who's making all that bloody noise, and won't entertain
the chance that the rising islands will testify.
A bit more consideration
as it's going to be getting on shortly
and you'd better weigh up
the shite, the simple treasure-ish cadaver-bowf
bestowed, despite itself,
on the insular heart
by the briny gannet, with each transparent squall.
A bit more consideration
and the skitters, six at night
OF THE MOST MAGNIFICENT BUM-NOTES
And the peninsula rises up
behind, gagged, fearless
on the mortal line of balance.
Peter Manson
Lancer's Gap
True (late) how tack so little repeat
on a scale thousands wide one lapse /
cycle the same dots tenfold, patient
as breaking honey
fining temper away
clear to the drain vessel, the hip-bone
of song-hollows merits a sampler tune:
wit break sign of felicity pump inner-drumskin
beyond which light arcs in cilia may flower wrongly.
O cambium arras in a ring threatened by blue roadkill
graft on a Camperdown elm these monkeying bronchi /
the unlockable base that came on the sly
imagine we dot the j too long ripening medlar.
Ancestors of the common throat meant this
once only, snaking a crest
out from the heart still subject to insect damage
to a bare sky
safe in the habit of real enmity
that bends.
Inconstant figuration of the hair trigger
(inefficient at getting the sound into air)
a tamper-evident lid pops in
to mark no paradise off no site of ochre
where, if I go cloning the rain surface
eyes projéct to the right margin, meet, and there is no border.
The man with the death's head
doesn't mean anything by it.
Echoes off the Atlantic talk the Ascension down
to pull the long path taut and allow burble in
but you are false, Aurora, and your instep race
a riot to complete the belt and confiscate
high telos in the bull
-dog's eye.
(Balloon debate:
it is a love errs in the killing foam /
aniseed rift in the breath all cold a token fire hazard
fusing the getter assembly so the right
will back out.
Abstract) the goal mouth
hurriedly from burning glasswort
is drinking flux. On the one eye
is breathed no specific skill; in an iris
denseness / critic
you angle in falling waters, logging men of peace.
No solid reason grounds the piping feet
a dove of basalt cracks on the redemptive landfall /
we gain on the closed loop you the extending shockface
take solace away rapidly shaped
like a duck first.
Of drake-stones
skipping across empires of the now partly sated
state apparatus used and the initial dewpoint
you sing the current defaults.
An ear is left off, clamped to earth; no horse
ballast abandoned by the trades to wing it
targets (o, for a scythe of meteoric iron!)
the main aim more here than at usage.
The game is life, the work is death and bondage
freeing up one thousandth part of stuck memory
in the blown mass that is plastic in waste heat.
It all goes cold too fast for true crystal / nightfall
is made final as who know but monitor
lizards on the wrong side, holding silence up.
To seize the mike took 3 years and the public key
crypto-romantic given, and a priming cut.
The collage of the propaganda fades;
interrogated, fails a Turing test.
A bead on sealed air told the spindle side
to strings the puppet centre punches out of nickel;
verbal or distal light surrogate enters threaded gristle /
there is no mail-drop here on the ribbed beeswax candle
but caustics play on the wall.
A hypochondriac
in archive skin descends on deep blue vocal prints
of pitch and place; a volley sounds. The drum
is fundamental, analysed. The drum
Jesse Glass
Hymn for the Servant Double
1
KA.
Mirror
Invisible if seen
On edge.
Demon gate
Inserted
In a mud ball. Your
2
Feathers
Fit for final
Gestures. Rise
3
After polite
Conversation
Hammer-wise. Rise.
I send you
4
Up there. Where?
Next to a
Pewter plate. Fake
5
Sweets. Cup
of crumbly
6
Dust. KA
Riding
A conveyor belt of
Tongues. Rising
7
Up. Becomes
A mincing Crab.
A furbelow. A quap. Or
8
Blown feathers.
Missing an appointment.
Trapped in a tun.
9
Preening. A Less-Than.
Precisely in moonlight.
Uneaten mango. More-than.
Presenting, a sphere of
Gnats tapping tangos
Near a sun-warmed tomato.
10
KA. & blackness
Planned
To do a simple task.
Must make do
In a momentary lag
Without the Pneuma.
11
Never set the table
for a sewn shut mouth
12
But assume that you're
A Tripod. Or wear
A moth hat of double
Tele-fronds.
13
& A small
Rocket
Explodes
Above an Eye
Outlined in mascara
Shattering
The Holy Throat,
14
Telling no-one
Where I lie.
Wood conquers.
Cough
That way. Cough if you can.
Step windily
If they trap
Your tattoo
In 1000 bronze mirrors,
Breast it
In a crown of terra cotta. Folded
15
Wren.
Trap smoke
In a coptic
Jar. Or secretly say
Knyx, Zoe, Shem,
Uh. Even a grain
Of spaghetti
Stains a codex
On the Q.T. &
16
Wheat gnawed
To mucilage by
Happy rats loaded
On a flywheel
& Spun beyond density
Makes a masterpiece
For goats that fear
A, E, I, O, U,
17
Struck upon milky stone
P.M. 10/6/97.
& loop Return
The Servant Double.
Knock a table
& Re/
turn.
To stony KA.