Excerpt from “Track”

        #

Listen to the children
who know their way about the forest
and return with stories

which the thief steals
exchanging them
for a kind of music.

        #

Listen to the music
which knows its way about the forest
and returns with stories

which the thief steals
obsessively
thinking they're allegories.

        #

Independent as any wife
or thief before his arrest
the stories in the forest

at home in the forest
wait there patiently
to be exchanged for music.

        ##

In some versions
there is a home among the trees
and in some versions

they live apart
so there are only the letters

In some versions they never meet at all.

        #

In some versions
there are many versions 
and in some versions only one

around which the commentators
weave endless versions
as if to explain.

        #

In these explanations
no single
cause or image

Eden calling
endless promise
endless disaster.

        #

Endless promise of disaster
endless disaster of promise

Eden gives way to forest
forest gives way to Eden

In some versions
there is only one version.

        #

The collage is the only version
the only version of the forest
in which there is no repetition

but an endless expanse of commentary
Listen carefully
as something disappears.

        #

Among the paper trees
a figure glides and stops

Shimmers in a light
that is a sort of music

Turns toward
or away from home.

        ##

Drunk tonight
in the House of Being

Laughter tonight
in the House of Language

So many
turned away at the door.

        #

So many
you would think it a story

an allegory
awaiting commentary

a history
in all its futility.

        #

Sew them together
and put them in a drawer

Tell someone
to burn them

Memorize them
and disappear.

        #

“All of these indicate that one's self, one's style, one's persona exists as such, in its infinitely complex and particular being; that it is not a question of this system or that, but of a total organization which must be described as a self. Style, in short, is the deepest thing in one's being.”

        #

So that now
all is broken
and has been made whole

So that now
all is whole
and cannot be broken.

        # I've been there before
I've been here before.