I return from the world of sleep and feel grudging acceptance of daylight, curtains, clothing. You do too. Oh you’ll tell yourself the snow is novel, the coffee perfect. You’ll resist my impertinent reach, declaring something about fatuousness—for even if what I say is true, even if you’re tired of dear things, you won’t admit it. And I don’t blame you. You have in mind hot yoga and a trip to the mall. The poet Anselm Hollo called American shopping malls “the bloody monolith” which beats anything I might add.
**
If my identity has value its outside the city walls. The blind are making violins. A man with one leg is eating fallen fruit. If its true folly is unsafe, then these men are unsafe. I know about this. I’m an expert in folly and ostracism. In the ocean of perception I’m suspicious but I still make my violin. The blind are still outside the city walls. Outside. Outside. In the woods.
**
I’ve entered the long winter of intellectual will at 58. My sentimentality has drained away. I still have a musical heart but its only interested in the later Mahler. My heart don’t give a shit about the Baroque.
**
Let me not mistake the petty tremors of my mind for insight. If there are still a few gods. I want clarity in old age.
**
See how these paragraphs grow smaller?
Planet of the Blind 