1

Through pain the land of pain
Through narrowness and self-hate
Through precious exiguity
Through cruel self-love
So came I to this inch of wholeness.

It was a promise.
After pain, I said,
An inch will be what never a boasted mile.

And my proud judgement
That would not know my nearly faultless plan
Smiles now upon my crippled execution
And my lost beauty praises me.

53

2

Other who have tasted the true water,
By this you are my other,
But in your otherness
You make a clumsy myth
And a still clumsier humanity.

Well, how shall I advise you,
Who first named the spring
And drink of it like nature?
To go dry, be parched, mean and mystical,
And know me decently, in a vision,
According to the skilled bookish custom?
Or to drain it as if bewitched,
Fall in a love fit and not get up
Till shame discovers you alone?

These are the ways of time not us.
No, be my other, be not they,
Be difficult, half bright, half slow,
And leave me strange and simple.
This imperfection is perfection.
This disappointment a foreshortening
Of the impossible.
Teach me to love a little
And I will keep the myth in reason
Long enough to make it human
And so be your other, and not clumsily.

Such is truly a just estimate.
If there is spite and persecution
It is that I advise you in yourself
When you would be advised in me
But no more damage may be done.

waiting for the toot toot waiting
for the Roberty Robert. E. Lee
A 1000 million people all gone wrong.
while a way a few living never die.

no no ark needed
millions stomp and stay
amazed. cant you hear
me calling caroline.

1,2,3 and 19,20 get as
far as the limit: so that
means the end of the world:
how simple.

no night or day: so 1,2,3
the end of the world: all
latin jokes lost: hey! hey!
no perfect day: no one
had spoke: no one had drifted.

what have we got telepathy,
no finality, no not needed
1,2,3, and 19,20 knew alone
what was nearer: satisfied
to know: only living to know
only knowing how simple:
where to go off what place to
step and us 1,2,3 stepping over.

71

- 2 -

when that's how then there
must be a limit so they'll
all be the same: as if 20
minds are really only one
mind: just the same one exact mind.
So we're all bound to know.

They ought to - that one
exact mind pulls the other
world over. Then a crash
and they know where to go for
a stepping stone from this
world to that.

meanwhile the millions still
love fireworks: let them stay
and enjoy the very last glare
down in the sandpits eating cake
with pitchforks while the stars
go moving on. So that ends
the last lesson.