Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.44.0211111312160.19046-100000@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>,
"WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" <WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: PotD (fwd)
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 13:12:23 -0500 (EST)
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 08:11:24 -0500 From: anastasios@hell.com Subject: PotD Hackett Avenue I used to like connections: Leaves floating on the water Like faces floating on the surface of a dream, On the surface of a swimming pool Once the holocaust was complete. And then I passed through stages of belief And unbelief, desire and restraint. I found myself repeating certain themes Ad interim, until they began to seem quaint And I began to feel myself a victim of coincidence, Inhabiting a film whose real title was my name -- Inhabiting a realm of fabulous constructions Made entirely of words, all words I should have known, and should have connected Until they meant whatever I might mean. But they're just fragments really, No more than that. A coast away, And then across an ocean fifty years away, I felt an ashen figure gliding through the leaves -- Bewitchment of intelligence by leaves -- A body floating clothed, facedown, A not-so-old philosopher dying in his bed -- At least I thought I felt those things. But then the line went dead And I was back here in the cave, another ghost Inhabiting the fourth part of the soul And waiting, and still waiting, for the sun to come up. Tell them I've had a wonderful life. Tell Mr. DeMille I'm ready for my close-up. --John Koethe John Koethe is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Milwaukee's first Poet Laureate. He has received the Frank O'Hara Award for Poetry, the Bernard F. Connors Award from The Paris Review and the Kingsley Tufts Award. He is also the author of The Continuity of Wittgenstein's Thought and Poetry at One Remove.