I was looking over some of my notes from class today. Here are some of the things I found.
(This was from the beginning of the term. It reminds me a little bit of The Snowman, by Wallace Stevens, which is suspiciously hanging on my wall. The 'you' is actually me.)
Judge for yourself the silence you must live by
Live in, and live unending
This becomes clearer everyday
As it grows greater
It is more than an escape or an action
More than a solution
It's a mighty ocean,
That you drift into day by day.
For it takes you into itself
Like a gull in the distance,
And you, the silent one, become the soul of silence.
Later in the term.
I've cut myself afloat, and drift in pain
escaping the land, it's burning rain
it's rolling banks of smoke, it's smog,
it's corpses lolling, it's smoldering logs,
it's rubble unending, it's cables and trash-
by the edge of the sea I lashed a raft
and cut myself off from the life I shared
though I surely die here, I wont gangrene there.
At some other point- chronology uncertain.
Lost from flights and fights uncertain in which very
many souls have been withdrawn, and hid beneath their stones
to pass the time I dally with leaves and skulls and berry-
ozzing bottles, uncorked and dripping over bones.
And by a foaming cup I dull the babble
of the lying dead that despise their place together
blown by cold fear like a wind in eddying rabbles
each gibbering its proof that he still will live forever,
and he alone. Far through the trees, rooks
are shaken up into the sky, as old bells speak
of battles heightening in the ruins where once men took
their war with heaven out in brick to build a tower and a keep.
To this riddle an answer I'd obtain
do I desert those fighters most to go or to remain?
Yesterday.
The oldest of brothers blubbered-
but not over his brothers grave-
why can't I fail more freely?
whoever finds me might not like me,
and it's more than I can bear.
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