i

In the interminable quest for truth

For the facts as perceived

What has to be included—

 

The zinnias, in the act—I need

To pay attention—of course rich golden

Petals in layers, rings, the central rows tipped auburn,

Built blossoms whose spiky digits were at that moment releasing

Their clasp of a polleny core which others still clung to,

Ravishing unconscious golden petals,

But what I also saw

Immediately was

The tangle of flabby leaves, that seemed

The green of old and sagging uniforms

Like cloth laundered to a shabby softness

Sorrowful as the inside of my arm

Crowded and in the process

Of dying, perhaps conscious of it too,

But only later, while drawing the whole mass

In pencil in my sketchbook

And so truly paying attention

Did I notice the buds

Their hard tight repeating patterns

Their wrapped spheres like green fists

With darkened auburn tips

Surrounded, as they were opened or were soon to open,

By thin rigorous leaves, spearmen

Guarding a family of royal youngsters,

Only then exactly to understand

What I see in this tangle is all process

All fierce birth maturity decline

Of some zinnias ripped

From a bush

And this is only one

Glassful of zinnias

And this is only one

Soliloquy

 

So shall I mention my daughter only married

One month ago

Mention flowering up and down the street

In Berkeley January

Mention a black short-haired dog

A lemon tree on the corner

Eucalyptus in the hills

Raining their scent

 

And this is only one soliloquy

 

 

ii

What the eye instantly consents to

Language stumbles after

Like some rejected

Clumsy perpetual lover, language

Encouraging himself: maybe this time

She’ll go with me, she’ll be nice

And sometimes she does and is, she swivels

Like a powdered blond on the next barstool

And turns around upon her glorious flanks,

She is kind to him

And he explodes, he’s out of his skin

With foolish pleasure—

 

It never lasts, however!

 

So in contrast with the intensity of the hard

Buds, pulling themselves open,

And on the other hand the grief

Of the flabby dying leaves, comes the unconscious

Soaring blossoms’ thickened glory

—Consciousness driving itself until it yields

Narcosis of full being, the golden blossoms

The petals of unconsciousness, which in turn break down

At the advent of decay

The very cells break down

Into thought, curling,

Gloomily ironic—

The very cells break down, their membranes crushed

And are dragged, as to a prison

 

Where the condemned

Beg for forgetfulness

Where the guards

Revel in brutality

 

 

iii

Table in the middle of the dining room

Clear grain, a stack of magazines, chipped dishes,

The band of sunlight diagonal on the dusty floor,

The thick telephone book, the daughter at school

Having plunged into it, her existence, having begun to swim hard,

The daughter’s husband dreamily at work across the bay,

The mother dreaming also, pencil in hand.

 

A glassful of zinnias on the table.