I'll read four more poems, if you can stand that many.
This next one is a poem about something
very difficult to talk about, about the way we acquire
knowledge intuitively, which sounds a little pompous
right for a start.
But it's something that does happen.
I mean, it is not only in rational ways
that one acquires knowledge.
It is not only by observation.
There are certain things that come to one in curious ways.
It's called "Wrestling with Angels."
Now, angels-- oh, I don't know whether in Hebrew or Greek,
but in one of those languages, it meant messenger.
And originally, an angel was not a gorgeous Renaissance
thing with wings, it was a messenger from God
who looked like a human being.
Maybe a little strange, maybe something
a little sinister about him or fae in the old Scottish word.
But, different.
When Jacob wrestled with the angel--
and I'm referring to that in the title--
it's "Wrestling with Angels."
Jacob-- I don't think knew at first
that it was an angel until the angel won.
And I mean angels here as being supernatural
and as being messengers from something
beyond man's knowledge.
I also refer to a palimpsest.
A palimpsest is a--
well, let me start sentence again.
In early medieval times when they
used to write on parchments, parchments were actually
dried goat skins, I think.
And they would write on them with a sharp stylus,
a sharp pen.
And some, maybe a couple of hundred years later,
people would think--
parchment being short-- they would think,
well, I don't need that writing anymore.
Let's wipe it all out and use it all over again,
as was possible.
Maybe this would happen yet again as fashions changed
and people felt their--
the things they needed to read might change.
However, this stylus was so sharp
that by holding it up to the light,
you can still see the other things that were written there.
So you get two or three or even four different levels
of writing, which is sometimes difficult to decipher
but they can be deciphered.
And this is known as a palimpsest.
It all fits in.
"Wrestling with Angels."
For Robert Duncan.
Discourse of sun and moon fire and beginnings
behind words the illuminated words.
A palimpsest the discourse having been erased and replaced
with words of a roll.
But if you hold the parchment to light,
you may see the discourse where the stylus pressed
the fat, where it has always held continuing luminous
behind.
The covering script, transparent to it.
No secret.
Clear.
Still.
Like a high window you never noticed.
It lets in light.
Continual discourse of angels, and sons of angels, of semen,
of beginnings, lucid accounts of flight,
arms for wings, a tale of wrestling with a stranger,
a stranger like a man, like a messenger.
Loping compact in familiar places,
he moves with that separate grace,
that sureness afoot you know in animal and angel.
Messages from sun and moon picked up
on waves, interpreted.
The sun and moon for signs for seasons hang in darkness.
Visible mysteries.
Fire and reflected fire.
Language of tides and seasons.
Luminous discourse.
Telling about beginnings.