Apartment
you
have found this
attached
to
an
email
message
or at the
uniform
resource locator
of
a literary
ezine
or
on a
printout
among
my files at the
North
Dakota Institute for Regional Studies
or
that I have sent you via
snailmail
you
are not reading it on marble, too many trivial words
to
merit engraving, though both you and I have come
to
accept expect desire the random grotesque jargonizing
of
the
internet
we
have to admit, so which are not trivial, why, how,
perhaps
the
electronic
medium
makes
everything even the
Mercian
Hymns
look
that way, turns even Attic into
Scheinsprache
but
the shine of the illuminated
screen
may
be the charm of it too, a winkling inveiglement to
new
democratic triviality, so you need not attend to my
next
question, why write words that do not merit
engraving,
because even words that did would not seem
to
here, and the question that follows, since any words
can
be made to look trivial why write for the
net
or
at all, we can let hang, who knows how what I
enter
will
look on
hard
copy
not
to mention stone
I have always been
à
part
the name of my state apartment
and I would rather stay in that
than any house would have to
residēre
or sit in one
of them be an armchair poet
while a
piso
våning
or
Etagenwohnung
is not where
to live only to wait awhile
and a year ago having
reached
vanaprasthya
wanting
to retreat loosen a few more
ties to humankind of which
I as recluse in motion had
not had too many anyway
I came to Fargo my na-
tive
town and got an apartment on Broadway full of sun
and
quiet to write in, it is not
Rydal
Mount
Max
Gate
Rowan
Oak
or
Nine
Ridge Road
Tor
House
Kitkitdizze
either,
I am not
august
and laurelled
or
domestic, my dad once owned a primitive farm where
I
had thought to
residēre
in
time but sold it the year he went down, the dream
not
quite mine enough would not have changed and gotten
me
off the road, although I can imagine another needy poet
kid
working to achieve
fame
some
remote edenic address, a
regents’
professorship
to
maintain it, who would come to thank his poetry
and
not his servitude, no I just meant to write awhile
in
the semipoverty the semianonymity that I have chosen
with
a mind to the calendar now and so I do, have health,
not
much to lament, a weird pragmatic assuring voice
in
my head
troof be tol
you not ol
but
time has begun to mark
the words come too easily
women no longer call right back
I am awake at four ay-em
not a worry to explain
my morning toast has gotten tough
the doorjamb hits my elbow
and
I am ready to
siedeln
einsiedeln
in
this good cell on Broadway from which I can look
down
watch the many that do not know me the very few
that
do walk by
until whenever I get
tired of working the word of
merely turning my head when not
no
radical change for a nondomestic man unmarried at
the
start of
vanaprathya
but
now you would like me to
paste
in
a
photo of where I am or what I can see from it, you
do
not believe me or that I could have
semianonymity
in
Fargo my hometown, well you may not understand the
situation
of a nonteaching recluse poet on the move in
America
which I have been, that the town’s growth left
the
core of it empty that home is a matter of time
Dakota
is
anywhere,
anyway I do not know how to
save
a
picture to marble would rather emulate the Yeats
figura
you
think it horrible that lust and rage
should
dance attendance upon my old age
than
use a camera
middle age cannot get much
later the older I become
the less I want a home and the
valley
spirit a female
of
enigma will never die
to remember
Tao
Te Ching
troof
be tol an ol man an
a recluse are no different
whether unmoving or on the
trek except when you are not both
and I who have always done the
way alone in my heart at least
am
turning old without rage, would not decline the
gift
of a
stone
pillow
or
wooden
shoes
would
take what came like a
drifting
boat
am
happy to set my eye out on a
bird
path
as
Kanzan
did
via
Gary
Snyder
an
old wisdom man even in his wild American kidhood,
tribal
however, let him have the committee work
I want the moment that Kan-
zan would turn or return me to
just to glory in it if you
do not mind that I use
as verb what we hate as a noun
but I am trying to avert
any mention of the real
point you say videlicet that
glorying is the clinging of
a man with not many a
moment to come and Zen to him
no more than a staying tactic
you
have half a point, I cling but not in fear, I enjoy
the
moment this way and that, it is fulfilling my
apartment
now, sun and quiet not to be ignored while
they
last, I would rather wait in my while than
make me a cairn or a rock
tower on the sea to achieve
and defend my repose in
a
high thick wall no barrier
to the one enemy myself
may
walk to the river today or tomorrow and watch it
move,
a
screen
next
time at the library, my written
entered
words
all fading out, no need to achieve repose
when you foo
it get you
Glossary for Apartment
| Rydal Mount |
home of William Wordsworth |
| Max Gate |
home of Thomas Hardy |
| Rowan Oak |
home of William Faulkner |
| Nine Ridge Road |
home of William Carlos Williams |
| Tor House |
home of Robinson Jeffers |
| Kitkitdizze |
home of Gary Snyder |
| siedeln |
settle |
| einsiedeln |
be a hermit (coinage) |
| Kanzan |
Cold Mountain, ancient Chinese poet |
|
Apartment