The wheels of the overturned wreck still spinning

(On negative capability)

The wheels of the overturned wreck
still spinning--

I am having trouble seeing how--
some lines trip, now they blare

my head my eye
an old tv, giving up the ghost.

Before horror,  everything.
Beyond horror, nothing.

O scow or barge loose--
should safely be moored. But people, those
people who have power in them?

I don't mean to despair, I mean if we do not--
at least to hear
in the manner of poetry.

Working notes

The second and third stanzas of this poem are taken from a journal entry trying to account for my experience of these last two days, as the reality of a Trump presidency in the US begins to sink in; the rest are citations and modifications of some writings of American poet George Oppen, who fled, with his wife and daughter to Mexico during the early 1950s after being repeatedly harassed by the FBI for his radical politics. Oppen is celebrated as a poet of "negative capability"--Keats' term for a poet who builds work from the capacity to ask questions and to reside in "uncertainty, mystery and doubt," rather than foreclosure or a drive to a preconceived end. For Oppen, and perhaps for all of us, ethics emerges from such confrontations with what seem to us to be situations of crisis.  How do we describe and respond fulsomely to our histories, and to the events that unfold around, before, because of and despite us? Such activities take time, and often, in a crisis, that's exactly what we're sure we do not have. Nevertheless, to take the time to try to think, to hear and to see, in and despite our various states of blindness, deafness and panic, is our truest calling, and something like prayer.

Those lines that begin "the wheels of the overturned wreck..." are taken from Oppen's poem "Route," which recounts his experience, in 1925, of being responsible for a fatal crash. Drunk, and at the wheel, he lost control of his vehicle. I don't mean to despair, I mean if we do not--" also reworks a portion of that poem, which is found in New Collected Poems (2002). (I write: "I don't mean to despair, I mean if we do not--/at least to hear/ in the manner of poetry;" Oppen wrote: "I don't mean he despairs, I mean if he does not/ He sees in the manner of poetry.")

"Before horror..." and "O scow or barge loose..." are lifted from Oppen's "Daybook 1," working notes that seem to have been written between 1963 and 1964, after the Oppens had returned to the US. (Stephen Cope, ed., George Open: Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers.) Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007): 58. In this section, Oppen muses on the latent potential of those who approach situations as bystanders, rather than actors.

Flexible dates

Mind reading and mentalism. Camera gear! 
Free psychic reader, 30 years. (I'm glad you're 
gone, I wish I had gone with you) Raw food. Garden
party. Thursday afternoon in the pet
store. You in your motorcycle jacket
looking at the fish. (Rebecca and I 
miss you) Me, talking to the bored bird. I thought we
had a moment (I miss everything about you) in
the hyperbaric chamber. Belly dancing. (When 
the time is right) You must speak
Swiss German. Have own platinum
dolls. Flexible dates. August 14,
2-5 pm. (You know who you are, 
you were bowling)

Notes
This poem was composed entirely from words lifted from the back pages of a June 2009 issue of The Coast, a free weekly newspaper distributed in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Personals, event advertisements, job listings, adult services and classifieds spell out the traffic of so many secret lives.

Photos are of various sites in Halifax and on the Eastern Shore.

Look Forward, Look Back

(A Short Pronouncement that Turns to Dialogue. And Citation.)

Look forward, look back: isn't that what we we do on this day?  But why just this day, or yesterday, or during the intervening week between Christmas and New Year's, when news is on short rations and so simply recycles? Always so many questions we might ask, but don't:

Who knocks as the clock clangs, as the snow piles up, flake by flake?
Will I be the one who must answer?

Our beauty so fleeting it runs out like ice on a hot day.

How far do I have to run to avoid coming back?

--As if you could, you know.

"Death is all things we see awake; all we see asleep is sleep."

--I know that, that's Heraclitus.  Just so you don't have the last word, here is another of his aphorisms:
"If all things turned to smoke, the nostrils would sort them out."

Or this: "The fairest order in the world is a heap of random sweepings."

--I knew you'd do that, get the last word.

But it wasn't me; it was Heraclitus. 

And now it's you.

No, it's you.  

Notes:
Heraclitis, Fragments LXXXIX, CXII and CXXV from Charles H. Kahn.  The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments with Translation and Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979. 

Photo: Old Montreal through the side mirror