And the last of these poems is a poem called "Longs".
I've given it so short a title because I
hope it will be ambiguous as to what part of speech it is.
It could be the verb, too long.
It could be long as an adjective.
It's about I suppose, to the extent
that I understand what it's about,
the poem is about ways in which we think of time.
And one thing that happens in the poem,
I'll let the rest of it make its arguments and movements
for itself.
But one of the things that happens in the poem is it
considers the possibility that the extent of attention
to detail that we're able to pay to the material world,
that same world in which the other world is present,
if you remember the early poem and that quote from Paul Éluard
that time is very slow and detailed when our attention is
careful and detailed.
If it isn't, we're bored fast and time seems long.
"Long.
It's about to be too late.
Every shred of the usual weather is precious and sexual
as it goes.
The way the links of a fugue become one
another's strict abandonments.
As for the future, it will not swerve.
Fire sleeps in the tree.
Which tree?
Fire sleeps without dreaming and cannot say.
If we call the future's name, it becomes our name by echo.
And from the dead, not even a plea that we leave them alone,
each dead locked and its dead name.
If the dead complained they would
say we summon them poorly.
Dull music and thin wine, nor love enough for the many
we make, much less for the melted dead in their boxes.
Above them we talk big since the place is vast.
And bland if we tire of looking closely.
Watched bland by light from what light lets us see.
Our study, the scripture of matter,
our long narcosis of parting."