The Ghent Review Volume1, Number 1, summer 2016 | Page 63

Ask and answer again. Question into answer into question again. Like in the
old days. Discussions on the rialto and agora. But the cup was handed to
him and he drank – what cup will I drink to its fullness of sweetness or
bitterness?
Stance and precondition condition me. I am not other than what I will
myself to be.
Meanwhile, on the agora… As if in that gathering something useful might be
said and adhered to. Like the condition of a new preamble. (I will begin, I am
beginning) river into sea, sea to the rock’s resistance.
Yes, I like that: resistance. If that is not what I am then what am I? riddle
me that out of confusion.
But no confusion today.
Clarity of light. Clarity of thought all be they many and varied: I am a
swirling eddy, I am a thicket in which a stag is tangled –see the freeing of
the stag. See him who sees himself as an Abraham unto a people but there
are no new lands for the old prophet and so pity the prophet with a broken
crown. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
Already he is a shadow disappearing behind me, going to where I’ve come
from but without the same starting point. Already he is a shade out of
Dante’s rounds slipping back into his old condition. Already he is behind me
and I will think of him no more. Already he is slipping out of memory like
water escaping from a stone only to be lost in the ground. Goodbye,
goodbye, goodbye.
Soft light on the froth of the sea. Soft froth of thought and sound. The world
is an audible bell. And that gull also – he of sound and echo and soft swish?
Bell and bell-buoy. A music for transcription. Mine will be the transcribing.
Soft, softly now. Low light and far light. What sound has light? I have lost, I
have gained. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.