This poem came from going back to Chicago
after having moved away and taking advantage
of very different museums--
one, where Jeff Koons had a display with a giant
mirror like bunny that greeted you and reflected you and then
down to Hyde Park to the Oriental Institute, where
on the same day, I was reading fragments of the Dead Sea
Scrolls.
There is also in here this strange thing
in 19th and 20th century linguistic,
where in 19th century linguistics,
an asterisk that printed meant that it was signaling
an ur-form, a source word that having found it,
meant there was another source and couldn't exist.
And in modern linguistics, the same symbol--
meaning that it was marking an impossible form.
And there's lots of asterisks in this poem.
And I'll mark those by doing jumping jacks.
And the poem is titled Museums.
Must I in this question I am asking
include myself for asking it?
Must I include my face, my face that I cannot see,
through which I speak these questions about my eyes,
about the field of vision, in which my hands press down these
letters unattached to my arms?
The sunlight comes in the window and lights up my hands
as they work.
The world is not being kind.
But there is the sensation of kindness.
There is an appeal to a rule when we realize
a term behaves uncomfortably.
God falls down into grammar and says, I am.
But the words are spoken from a bush on fire.
God is included in this grammar.
Philosophy offers to the flies stuck in the bottle.
There it is on the table, walking
in circles within the empty bottle,
pausing only to rub its four legs together
in anticipation or prayer.
I remember walking into the glass walled museum
and seeing myself reflected in the head
and in the belly of the metal rabbit's mirror-like skin.
This was not long ago.
This experience of the ancient world reasons simultaneous with
appetite, watching myself think, seeing my eyes thinking,
my body-- a body that contained this thinking that I write
in the margins of the books I read--
a script that over time appears less legible,
a form-- a cuneiform.
I cannot read myself what I wrote in the margins.
There is a fragment that floats in the air, floating
in my mind, spoken by a voice, not mind to study--
circumcises the heart and calms.
The book studies the heart.
Many words are missing or illegible.
If not, to turn away, fire courses through the veins.
Many words are missing or illegible.
Then anger, anger-- leaning back in the tall grass,
putting my book aside.
My toe covers the sun.
I am imagining this world, but I'm inviting you in,
so I can join you.
In the old language, the language no one ever spoke.
The language, whose words in the scholarly papers,
are marked by stars--
asterisks, that say, this word exists
by not existing, the imaginary route pushing down from the sky
into our heads, the root of the tongue.
In this language, I meant here.
It did not mean me.
It meant a location in which this body I am it's
not an expression of love but a word of presence.
Here I am-- voice and a boundary.
And this place I am, I once had a dream--
cylindrical seals rolled across the Earth, printing in the mud
the image of a woman, braiding.
Her hair was loose, and then her hair was bound.
These roads end at the horizon, where I also
end, present in this world as the alphabet
is present in this poem.
Asterisk-- I, asterisk--
I. Sometimes, asterisk--
I like to stutter.
Asterisk-- I like to think the sky is blue.
Asterisk-- I see sometimes it's red.
More soon on the nature of impossible constructions--
the man in the moon, the sea rose, the living room.