Under the ocean where the debris field of Stephen spreads like a comet you’ll find Basho’s words on stones but don’t give up on your own shipwreck–there’s plenty of travel weary skeleton-lingo to go around. “Real poetry, is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it.”
You see? It’s ok to sink.
**
The Disabled are routinely disparaged; we often must leave the room to repair our wits; we return, wounded but renewed by patience—-for what else can I call it—this belief in personal and collective victory? Sinking is the nautilus, the “Basho.”
**
I am one of those who sorrows. When the sun shines—-neurasthenia
they once called it–if I tell you this you’ll not necessarily
believe me. It’s a guild, something tribal this business of hearing the dead.
My great grandfather
The wheelwright
Hammers
Infant coffins
From stray boards.
Basho writes, rock on rock.
**
I spoke once to the renowned Finnish poet Pentti Saarikoski by telephone. He was ill, dying in fact and receiving no visitors, but he said: “maybe we will meet one day in this mad world.”
I think of him often. I meet him. Yesterday a lonely man, today a teenaged boy walking in rain.
Saarikoski knew his Heraclitus. “Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing for the known way is an impasse.”
Let this be our character.
“The most beautiful arrangement is a pile of things poured out at random…”
In this mad world…
Basho. Rain. Unforeseen flight.
Planet of the Blind 