1976

Thought searches for
possibilities, action
realizes them. (But)
action also eliminates
possibilites, brackets
them through the
shaping language of
gesture. A line
of poetry suggests
a number of
possible completions.
The gesture that
imitates it may be
partially bracketed
out of language by
thought's choice of
refusing to read
it. Then I may
visualize a series
of alternating meanings,
approximations of
its disclosure, which
envision it.

If you do not
encourage me
to be silent you
encourage me
to speak. Gesture
now resembles an
automatic response.
By refusing to
delay I prolong
an uncertainty
of form if I
gesture, suddenly
immersed in the
anxiety of
defining a
specific relation
to accumulated
signals, reminders
of what is
most recent. If
I delay and
break it off
I won't know
the form of
a specific
reference.

Words appear
like signposts
along the way.
Freed from their
responsibility
as adherents
of naming
specific locales
on a specific
grid of the
definitions of
a particular
word, now
I know which
texts I
want to
read. Choosing
the direction
of a desire
that would
point me
towards a
specific axis
of action,
I suspend it
into an
array of
choices
binding me
to an
abbreviation
of a previous
unity that
(from their
interplay)
would
disclose and
open simultaneously
reversing and
recombining the
imagined lines
in a slowly
changing series
of pretended
gestures which
gradually rescue
and release what
is possibly future
in it, like the
sound of the
plane, its
reminders, the
scent of ocean,
the gradually
decaying sentence
fragment shown
just enough
to lead me again
to gently approach
it in thought,
weighing, enlarging,
comparing its
alternatives, again,
saddened by its
departure into
incomprehension,
meaninglessness,
sadness, the
infinitesimal, the
humanly vulnerable.
Saying goodbye
to the poem
I barely remember
it but keep it
read and unread or
almost read or soon
to be read, so that
I remember some
particular of what
I forgot which is
simply reversing the
process of naming
it and keeping its
representation as
part of
forgetting. Madness
always comes as
a surprise.