THE METAPHYSICAL ART, BK. II. "OLD PEOPLE"

[1]

A man examines many aspects of life, all of which are fragments.

"This fragment is transparent: that life is not a fragment..."

[2]

"Life begins when you carry a music-box..."

"You are on an island, and the island is only what you take with you..."

Sometimes the city is just the music inside you...

[3]

At other times, the world echoes within the music,

Contained within your island.

Sometimes music is the filter of something...

Which, if unfiltered, would be crass enough to be meaningless...

Life is the epoch of music, and also civilization...


[4]

Sometimes civilization is the only island,

And every other island is an obliteration...

Cities are the language of ablated languages...

Cities are the noun of many transitive verbs...

What is left of the city is astonishing:

It is an amusement without music,

A cadence of something which is without pitch...

The architecture is lost in the silence


[5]

Then we move beyond the music machine...

We move beyond the clocks...

That lie beneath the shadows...

We see that every figure that makes an impression...

Is a mime making a performance...

The silence is civilization...

The performance is the part of the figure that makes an impression...

We see a mad man walking around in a miniature ship that is stricken with lightning...

We see a psychologist, inviting people into the cave of his mind...

We see the archeologist uncovering nothing other than curiosity...

And the politician flanked by a white wall...

Perhaps they are all growing their gardens?

The madman is the economist, a powerful figure.

The psychologist has taken the project literally, with a lot of added imagination.

The archeologist has the secret, but worships mystery with childlike wonder.

The politician is the most familiar with the garden, but has become a filligree goldfish.

Yet the gardens grow without the city.

Decay becomes the language denying the words.


[6]

Beyond the figures, which gambol on the heraldric field of consciousness,

(they are like moving statues, gargoyles...)

a theme of universal ideas appears...

There are now many ships, perhaps carrying junk...

Madmen, medicine, rare herbs, books on subjects as obscure as psycho-analysis...

Simultaneously, there is the brain:

The dark overlap of many caverns,

Barely extruding with the palpitations of numerous organisms.

Lucid, and yet clouded in shadow, inky, and for the moment, suspended,

Langorous with Epicurean sentimentality.

The brain is like the caves of many psychologists.

And, there is, separately, an ideal system, unknown to men,

Which lies like invisible bones in the backshadow of all this posterity...

Bones undiscovered by any archeologist, with properties beyond all poetry...

Neither fervent, nor given to any sort of care...

A consciousness devoid of regret, and finding all challenges futile to its temperament...

Neither spiritually dull, nor given to conviction...

A shape undiscovered by a single one of life's many sentences

And, there is also a labyrinth where everything is dark, except for the whitened wall...

Where the politician preaches like a scientist...

And the maze is the darkness of his intellect, and also, the meanings preserved, for those...

That do not speak the language of lies...

Yet politics is its message...

And it is older than the music found  inside the cities...


[7]

There are theories on how the music is written,

Duller than the words that echo from young children,

For example, perhaps music is a momento----

A momento mori for the passage of time----

An oseograph of the tables of circumstance----

An idea of things that no longer hold truth!

Or perhaps the idea is to solve something temporarily---

A tear in a sail or a flag!

A graffiti pointing to an ugly protruding pipe,

Which is also ugly!

But then these figures subside into language...

A static reification... A celestial temple of fraud...

And the language in turn melts into silence...

The silence of civilization---!


[8]

Now I can explain what magic means to an old person.

I can explain that hexagrams and other figures from geometry...

Are spare postulates, dirty enough to mean nothing...

Yet containing the fragrence of a magic spell!

The flavor of circumstance is contained in the dark grooves...

Time echoes with mute intimations...

This is why some people go blind...

Why some wise people are mutes...

It is idiotic sophistry---!

The sophistry of passing time---!

Nothing matters like a sign!

And the sign holds without comment the passing of many worlds.

The egress on truth was no more than a decorous moment,

Contained in the shadow of the sign----

Like sand in a blob of glass!

The item of concern is not magic---

Magic is taller than the music of distress---!

In this world, language is the manner of turning

Grass and sticks into shadows that weave divines!

But the stick is ordinary grass, and the shadow

Is probably sand...

The music, if it carries, seems completely mad!

The cadence of civilization is no more than those puristic symbols...

Painted over the skin...

Perverse with the magic of time.

And ordinary words seem dull...

Because they are dull...

They are figments of shadows...

Busted like wine.


[9]

Then, there is a picture of age...

As something from a map...

One of many distinct shapes...

Each, perhaps crude,

But, lending secrets...

To scrutibiilty.

Each old thing contains a youth...

Each youth becomes wise by age...

Each age is written in youth...

Each dead man is a sage...

Poets learn to wake from death...

And history learns their words...

And people begin to die by death...

Proof becomes a ridiculous gift...

Life becomes a choice...

Heaven is ice to fire, and fire to ice...

Every man has a price...

And stories are what's left of being nice...

But metaphysics thrives...


[10]

Beyond this point, sages are men...

And men live immortally...

It is not merely celebration...

But the sacred earth of philosophy...

A creation like a device within the mind...

A machine of temperamental matters...

Caught on the wing of epiphanization---

The luck of gods...

Gelt for the locking statues of representation...

Measures of truth echo...

Without evoking harsh music...

Thought's tendrils form a shape of overlapping patterns...

Nothing is the school of this design...

The naked truth burns harmlessly...

Figures gape with mystery...

Religion toils on the infinity...

Nothing is left of depravity...

Except sacred madness...

The consolation of infinite intelligence...


[11]

Then there is a confrontation:

Everybody's central epiphany!

To make matters work----

Like clockwork's God!

The strange rule of correspondence!

Dissipating the soul of circumstance!

Trump arrives late...

On the field of potential systems!

Prodigies basicify.

Commonsense hegemonies all these foresaken.---

The math winces, and out pours genius---!

Many winters pawned on fickle circumstance!

The rule is sober...

And the test is sullen...

Gods radio the silence of the foresaken!

The weather clears a space for lucid minds---

And ugliness begins to trace its sublimes----

The race of winter dulls the sense...

The appetite removes the heart of avarice...

In the wild mildness, knowledge-flowers grow---

Radiating the mild gladness of unfallen snows...

Deserts economize the truths of expectation...

Afterwards, the summer itself becomes a tale of spring!


[12]

Fallen from the buttonhole of some conclave,

Coincidences play their game...

The same things that were once deemed ordinary,

Demand articulate proof and fine-tuned reasoning...

Everything is elevated upon solid rock...

Winding like a self-winding clockwork...

Full of spark!

The suddenness of evening is not the same strange roar...

No more are the highway bandits or the winding bores...

Everything is immaculate,

Like stilt-walkers, or vignettes of fantastic birds...

Calligraphy in the snow...

The rules rouse feeling now...

The shape of everything has theoretical bearing...

As if the world was made of artist's palettes...

And buildings were dabbling in some kind of profound eyeshadow...

It seems that everyone is winning...

Everyone can become a god...

Everyone can make a shape in the sod...

Everyone is made of sticks...

Everyone is worth some bricks...

What is vacant now?


[13]

God is hiding an instrumental madness!

The life of the show!

Illusion takes everyone in tow!

The beginning is lost!

Providence destains the child!

Wisdom grows wild!

The worst things fade from view!

Gone are the shadows cutting through the snow!

Gone are the images of painful moments!

The sacrifice of sex!

The letters of the law!

The elements of indifference!

The pattern of un-reasonableness!

God has lifted up the chains!

And put everyone in Celestial Heaven!

Life still falls below...

Like a valley in a mountain!

Images fall like snow.



[Now metaphysics has been cast in doubt,

And words that were hated are now devout...

The pattern is nature...

But rules are out...]