Wires

Twisting and weaving,
The lines conducting
Everything you need

To know, everything
You need to send off,
Constrained and focused,

As little leaking
As possible so
That repetition

Doesn’t exhaust them—
Can you see them rope,
Can you feel them there,

The narrow highways,
The nervous system,
Terribly nervous,

Entangling mere air?
Sitting beside them,
Watching the traffic,

You wayside demon,
You insulation,
Who ends in who cares.

Now and Then Running Away

Sebald could do no better

Than to refer to the sound

Of a small, quicksilver stream

As proverbial babble,

As his translator has it

In English. It pauses you.

What is it about stream sounds

That dulls the machinery

Of likenesses in the mind?

Murmuring or whispering,

Chuckling, gurgling, or babbling,

Streams are given human sounds

On the verge of semantics,

Half conspiratorial,

Not quite conversational,

Mostly intimate, private.

And such small variety!

The metaphors for the moon,

For the clouds, for the forests,

Have range, try out surprises,

But for the sound of a stream,

The haul of comparisons

Are this handful of minor

Human vocalizations.

There’s a straining, listening.

Streams seem to have what Frost called

The sound of sense, but not sense.

That way, they’re a kind of verse,

An overheard prosody

In unknowable language.

Is this the best you can do?

The continuous sound waves

Moving air around water

That’s been coursing over rocks—

Can’t you see the motion there,

Feel the flicker on your skin?

There’s no one talking here, least

Of all the cascading wet.

It’s not communication

Nearing the lip of meaning.

What you’re hearing are escapes,

The confusions of release.

Your Younger World

Every world is younger, deep in your skull,
But you’re rarely confused except dreaming,

And the question isn’t really, why dreams?
But uselessly, hopelessly, why those dreams?

That’s the real reason you’re interested.
Why that particular weirdness for you?

Of all that’s going on in waking life,
Why this dreaming, where some of your ghosts live

But some never visit, where your youth longs
For blurred humans who never existed,

Where physics works sometimes but not always,
Where you are lonely as when you’re awake?

Agreement

Pity there’s no way to say
Exactly what way of life,
Which society, which place

Would be the best to be in
Or, better yet, which the best
Way of life within the range

Of human capacity.
Everyone has their notions,
And there is some overlap

Among morals and ideals,
But there’s no real confidence
This whole sad species could share

As to the best direction
To aim coordination.
Teamwork remains emergent

From individual need
And greed, and what’s systemic
Has a typical pattern

Of working well for a few,
Fairly well for quite a few,
Cannibalizing the rest,

Enduring by inertia
Until some other system
Takes over to do the same.

Maybe knowing wouldn’t help.
Maybe knowing never helps.
But agreement might not hurt.