Exile
There was the Fullness and there were the wastes where he roamed and found his first separation. He was chased by rays of light through the courts of symmetry and hounded through empty galaxies. When he hurtled into this air he hid in skies livid with the threat of thunder, throats of caves. He ducked into the hut of mutiny, so different from his first estate, gritted to stay for eternities; asked and expected nothing. He practised the thousand voices. The earth’s hollows threw them back and forth; none wanted them. Spirits scratched at his shelter like branches. He let them into his Falling and gave them fake credentials for a wild solitude: he found his calling.
March 1, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Here we see the poet widen his efforts from dilettantish quoting and adolescent navel-gazing to a vision – to grace it with a word it hardly deserves – of ‘Cosmic Evil’. If the conception is conceited, how much more so the execution! I cannot be the only one to find in these words a glibness that is almost sinister. What is clear is that this must be the final entry in the Journal of Deserted Beauty. I would have preferred to have misunderstood him, that is, to have understood him as he wants me to understand him.