Wooden Statue, Ashland, OR
—Photo by Cynthia Linville, Sacramento
IF A POEM CAN BE HEADED INTO ITS PROPER
CURRENT SOMEONE WILL TAKE IT WITHIN HIS HEART
TO THE POWER AND BEAUTY OF EVERYBODY
—Kenneth Patchen
Arrive to arrive and to arrive here in such thick
White silence
The eye turned away
Without vanity or desire
And seeing is seen
And the music of the silence flows on the world
With a rhythm and a pulse which are changed
In the blood-beat as the heart's course by death
And hearing is heard as in the very sea
There is no sound
So in the purest thought
When vanity and desire of all mortal ends
Have been submerged
We may join the thinking which is eternally around us
And be thought about
For the common good
Of the one creature which everything is
Man is not to direct or to be directed
Anymore than a tree or a cloud or a stone
Man is not to rule or to be ruled
Anymore than a faith or a truth or a love
Man is not to doubt or to be doubted
Anymore than a wave or a seed or a fire
There is no problem in living
Which life hasn't answered to its own need
And we cannot direct, rule, or doubt what is beyond
Our highest ability to understand
We can only be humble before it
We can only worship ourselves because we are part of it
The eye in the leaf is watching out of our fingers
The ear in the stone is listening through our voices
The thought of the wave is thinking in our dreams
The faith of the seed is building with our deaths
I speak of the music of the silence
As being what is left when the singers and the dancers
Have grown still
Something is left there
A part of the reverence and of the need
A part of the fear and the pain and the wonder
And it goes on there
Coming from where it came from (O beautiful goddess!)
And reaching for what it can have little awareness of
A rhythm quite unlike any we know here
Bound and swayed as we are by the blood's orchestration
Bound and swayed as we are by the orchestration within us
By the deceptive orchestration of the blood
And I speak of the goddess
I speak of the goddess
I speak of the beautiful goddess
O tell them what I would say
CURRENT SOMEONE WILL TAKE IT WITHIN HIS HEART
TO THE POWER AND BEAUTY OF EVERYBODY
—Kenneth Patchen
Arrive to arrive and to arrive here in such thick
White silence
The eye turned away
Without vanity or desire
And seeing is seen
And the music of the silence flows on the world
With a rhythm and a pulse which are changed
In the blood-beat as the heart's course by death
And hearing is heard as in the very sea
There is no sound
So in the purest thought
When vanity and desire of all mortal ends
Have been submerged
We may join the thinking which is eternally around us
And be thought about
For the common good
Of the one creature which everything is
Man is not to direct or to be directed
Anymore than a tree or a cloud or a stone
Man is not to rule or to be ruled
Anymore than a faith or a truth or a love
Man is not to doubt or to be doubted
Anymore than a wave or a seed or a fire
There is no problem in living
Which life hasn't answered to its own need
And we cannot direct, rule, or doubt what is beyond
Our highest ability to understand
We can only be humble before it
We can only worship ourselves because we are part of it
The eye in the leaf is watching out of our fingers
The ear in the stone is listening through our voices
The thought of the wave is thinking in our dreams
The faith of the seed is building with our deaths
I speak of the music of the silence
As being what is left when the singers and the dancers
Have grown still
Something is left there
A part of the reverence and of the need
A part of the fear and the pain and the wonder
And it goes on there
Coming from where it came from (O beautiful goddess!)
And reaching for what it can have little awareness of
A rhythm quite unlike any we know here
Bound and swayed as we are by the blood's orchestration
Bound and swayed as we are by the orchestration within us
By the deceptive orchestration of the blood
And I speak of the goddess
I speak of the goddess
I speak of the beautiful goddess
O tell them what I would say
_____________________________
—Medusa
Area poets will be saddened to hear that Arthur Knight has passed away.
