So that poem, it's called "Lifespan Addenda. "
And it comes after a suite of 12 poems that together are titled
The History of Ideas, 1973-2012.
A cheeky title that kind of refers to, for one thing,
a five volume reference work that continues to amaze me
called The Dictionary of the History of Ideas.
In five volumes, so one of the volumes
is like Despotism to Protestantism or something.
And so there are 12 poems in here,
all with titles of abstractions--
space, casuistry, alienation, authority.
And the poems begin with a statement of fact lifted out
of that reference work.
And end, each of them, with a platitude or an aphorism that's
kind of snatched from the intellectual ether
of the last few years.
So some of the ending quotes are by Tyra Banks, Thomas Friedman,
Malcolm Gladwell, Temple Grandin.
A lot of them are sort of specious or bothersome
in some way.
And the poems kind of drift from the fact to the platitude.
I want to read one of these.
This one is called "Symmetry."
and I ascribe the closing quote to Chuck Palahniuk
but I think it belongs to like Century 21 or some sort
of realtor instead.
[LAUGHING]
"Symmetry."
"Whenever a form or unit of life comes
into being on any spot of the universe,
then any such occurrence taken by itself
runs counter to the general trend
towards an increase of the entropy.
By what shade stain was left, we told aptitude
and woke him at last.
Where prior elders may have swabbed with resin
and covered properly as he lay the birthday boy with falcon
down, we borrow from the annals only the prior elder prayer.
Not that he'd remember.
We couldn't get the recitation solemn enough.
Worse, worse the huddle more worrisome
when legislative is men's agreement going in
to raise temerity from downcast scrutiny.
Piteous the metal taste of smoking and crying.
Bereft the transactive sacrament until the lashes flutter.
Saw him later in the same puny dyad we'd all had,
rocking the subdivision no one in the rumble seat
'sides his baby.
Down Alvernon we dressed the tracking
shot to dolly with his figure in the Tyvek home wrap,
should he turn.
It's my experience the event gets less eccentric, not more,
becoming plainly a circle by the end, like the soil
spot you tell ripeness by.
A tart disclosure asks that you blush back
if you're going to stay for the drop like an illness welling,
awaiting him.
It came upon me to redraw our crest,
to entwine the filigree, tie compunction about belief.
The bird on the cadge sorting through its bib
in a final administration as if undoing the torse.
Grant, to be born and live as variously as possible.
Unless this takes, whereby togetherness,
our given and ground, would lift or even belie the law.
It intermits the trend: alone is always alone again.
Grant, we turn you down.
If you lived here, you'd be home by now.
[LAUGHING]