less and less seems to matter and it's good i'm not

[Alan Sondheim]

less and less seems to matter and it's good i'm not
Cold Mountain and can't turn towards moss. but i'm
aware more than ever of the slow movement of the
planet, our inconceivable position on the thinnest of
crusts, the localized nature of our wants and
desires, the fragility of every good thing upon the
face of the earth. we're tottering, we look out, we
sense the plasma, enormous forces forsaking us just
for the moment, for the first and last breath. we
come together online but i'm sick of the absence of
touch, nothing for any of us but words and no
shudders. it's good, for of one not to be here and to
be here, but there are so many places in their
loveliness i would like to see before i die, places
already fast disappearing beneath the towering sun.
this is not metaphor, not the world as if it were the
world, but a gentle disassociating as i feel myself
slipping into some long sleep, some disconnecting
denouement. only then will leaves grow quietly and
unseen, scurryings meandering beneath the grass and
sightless for so many of us. there is no irony here,
not for a moment, no cynicism, only the desire for
the beauty of the world and nostalgia for so many
opportunities that will remain permanently missed.
how many people have we made promises to, that we
will never see again? promises made beyond wars and
peaces, beyond births and slaughters, cures for new
diseases, sudden earthquakes, floods, extinctions. i
am thinking of quiescence, the fineness of sunsets
one might never see, conversations ending decades ago
- i can hear them now - that will never be revived.
and i would leave all belonging among them, and i
would leave all desire among them, all holdings and
possessions, all plans, short and long term, imminent
and transcendent, all of the length of a pine board.
our strategies fade before our eyes, as do the sounds
of voices stilled forever, the slightest movement of
a hand, that particular gesture that defined you,
that slight of hand, that slightest gesture,
forgotten after the passing of personal knowledge, so
that books may get it wrong, reconstruct nothing,
theorize and pretending, holding off their own
harbingers of death, as death they announce, as death
they proclaim, the oldest of charms. one only can
hope for the forgetting of this and these, for the
releasing, so that others may be seen momentarily in
their scurryings as movement beneath and within the
stars, as designs enfolding, unfolding, but never of
commitment impossible to conceive, retain. these
books and wires, this natural world, retains and
moves beyond, always beyond in each and every
direction, of the quarters and fifths of directions,
of the firsts and seconds of directions, this
movement uncharted, forgotten, the tiniest smile at a
joke only half remembered, times that were always
those which were, of the scent of a spring evening
and certain trees and flowers, of changeling worlds
and the sound of winging birds


__