WEBVTT

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So I'm going to read a
poem that, in some ways,

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is very much still in
progress, which is unwise.

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But it's fitting, I
think, for the day.

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In the odd way in which the
poem seemed to adhesively attach

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to one odd thing to a next, it
begins with Thoreau's journals,

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where in the early 1840s,
he twice mentions the fact

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that the corn grows at night--

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a thing which, for reasons
I can't explain to myself,

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concerns me.

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He also, at the
same time, thinks

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about the flower of the pansy,
and equates its name, "pansy,"

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with "pense" or thinking,
and has these two or three

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little passages-- sentences
really-- in the journals,

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where he talks about the
pansy as a thinking thing.

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Because I'm teaching Keats,
and pansies are a flower,

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Keats' notion of the
imagination as being that which

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is not the bee collecting honey,
but the flower being collected,

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struck my mind.

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Which then, in its
absurd way, went

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to the Homeric hymn to Hermes,
in which Apollo gives Hermes,

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at the end of this
insane ordeal,

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on the very first day of Hermes
birth, in which he stands up,

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sneaks out the door, and
steals Apollo's sacred cattle--

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which makes my own parenting
experience seem calm.

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He gives him, not a
real gift of prophecy,

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but allows him to talk
to the bee maidens, who,

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when they have eaten their fill
of honey, prophecy the truth.

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But when they're
hungry, they tell lies.

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And this poem is titled
"Overtakelessness."

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The corn grows at night.

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The pansy thinks.

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A first fact satisfies
until it sings.

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Pansy, as pense,
revises its petal.

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Pollen's adhesive edits the
mile the bee dance's amendment,

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the pedagogy simple--

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betray the text's ample
fact by dulling the sickle.

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Gentlessness is a word
to describe that which

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must deny itself to exist.

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It is a word I made up to
describe to myself, myself

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and other fields.

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Nobody taught me
this dance I dance.

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I gather the air as
weight around me.

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Murmured rumors
the pansies speak.

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I learned to shake my
head from side to side,

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to pack my ears in pollen.

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Where did I bury it, the sea--

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I mean the seed?

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Pansies grow pensive.

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They point at the sun
by opening their faces.

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They open their faces
to point at the sun.

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Where did I bury it, the seed--

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I mean the sea?

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The sun rises twice, less
gentle in the other field,

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overtakeless in mine.

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The pansies sing
their nursery rhyme.

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A fact is a fact.

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Roots dig.

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Tendrils twine.

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The sun is the sun.

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We call ours, I call mine.

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The corn grows at night,
but where is the night?

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A song the sun sings to dull
itself down, gentle other.

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Right here is where
the day begins to lull.

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The bee maidens speak
a minor prophecy true

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when gorged on honey.

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But went hungry,
the bee maidens lie.

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In words, there
is no difference.

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The poem is a hermetic delight.

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