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The Words
If Wittgenstein is right, and the meaning of a word lies in its use, We have only to worship the language to recover the glory: Geode, littoral drift, oxbow, krummholz, felsenmeer, frost line
Might all prove hidden psalms if only we could speak aright. I once saw a bracelet inscribed WWWD: What would Wittgenstein do? A man chill as alpine streams, that one, clear-eyed as a komodo lizard.
Kafka said the arrow always fits precisely into the wound it makes, But what fits this ache of being without being everything? God has one true name and a thousand he doesn’t answer,
Though each is a note in the chromatic scale of ecstasy: G-minor melting the body to sunlight, A-major resurrecting Young love, and silence flickering with lightning applause
Today I’m writing fan mail to God to ask what music He prefers. The whisper of a dog’s eyes? Recitative of a girl jump-roping? A diminuendo of starlings streaking the dusk sky like virga?
The same madness took Van Gogh, Schumann, Christopher Smart, Who wept to find themselves flowing into the jubilant design, As if their fingerprints had become eddies in a giant river of stars.
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Temple Cone’s fifth chapbook of poetry, Eurydice & Orpheus, is due out from Finishing Line Press this year. He is an assistant professor of English at the U.S. Naval Academy and lives in Annapolis with his wife and daughter. |
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Date of Publication: 19 Oct 2008 |
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