Reading and recording
my old diaries,
meticulously kept
from the summer of 1963
up to the late 1980s
- with extended additions
in verbal slots
all the way up to the present -
is a skin-tight procedure
executed with faraway eyes
from inside a spinning top mind
I seem part of somebody else's me,
thinking and doing old fashions
in the aged's old settings
as young,
with mixed shame and pride,
but mostly dearly distanced,
in a slightly moulded atmosphere
So why not clear away the illusion
of presence
and accept the mouldness
and farawayity
of this and here;
even place it in a future pre-history
on the other side of the unknown universe,
many black holes away?
I hear the tone rise
as I approach myself;
feel the general sense of myself sink
through the pitches
as I pass and recede
out of reach;
the organs on a joint mission
Death is a common cause
for estrangement,
but it's a known trait for the living
to consider themselves exceptions;
the Rule at bay,
down to the last Rolex moment,
to the last frame of the last Rolleiflex
still ready for love at last sight,
the afterglow of someone waning;
the reverberation of the bell in Hiroshima
dying down,
leaving a monstrous silence
pregnant
with mumbling voices,
from the Wailing Wall
to the first performance
of John Cage's 4'33
at The Maverick Hall, Woodstock,
August 1952