Talking to Text

For the objects before me on the page
I can offer no advice
Nor resolution, nor
Can I even say, despite the world
'Yes, you exist.'

This great incapability
I detect and admit
To myself, and it is
A great relief even
As it is something accursed

To these things before me,
As things in themselves that
Constitute the parts of
Some greater thing
I would like to touch,
I can offer only resignation

Must I therefore realise that
Someday I will die?
It does not seem sufficient
To defend this urge or
Coax it into existence
As a tree that spreads its
Helpless leaves skyward
Since, borne high as I would be
Along its channels of sustenance
I would lose my capacity
To remember that struggle which
Defined the event of my life

When I become close to another,
All that I can see is another's desire,
Yet when I reflect myself in a mirror,
There is something else there, some not-me
Who is desireless

And so I would rather see that unreachable desire
In the one who lies beside me now
Than that desirable image that lacks it's own light

There is a thing that we do when we are sad or unsure,
And that is to throw a question into a void
Without expecting an answer, but knowing somehow
That yes, it will arrive somewhere

Sadness says 'I cannot go,
But I will go,'
And secretly hopes to return
The innermost silence
That lives at the bottom of itself
Looks out onto the sum of life

It presents a vista
That cannot be scaled
And, falling asleep, it dies

This is where one stands
When what is sought is
A great, un-named, treasure

We are looking for time
When we turn our gaze to the horizon

The spirits of concord
Place veils of light over this nothing

The heartbeat is illogical
And yet it utters only truth

The soul is at rest in its immortality,
And yet it seeks death at every turn

The line of a circle that breaks
Is a quiet, wonderful pain

Whatever I can grasp here
In this den of nothing
Whatever the dreams of a childhood
I do not remember at the threshold of
Tomorrow morning

I will abandon everything
I will abandon myself, where yesterday,
Cooking in a kitchen I could not call my own
I said to myself 'You are you,'
As if that was all I had to know.