#580 - the riddle

4.viii.21

580

2.215

the riddle

 

why not, like a banqueter, depart the halls

full of life?

                  – Lucretius De Rerum Natura 3:940

 

 

what is it more untroubled than sleep?

 

the not-a-place

where I won’t go

nor you

nor shall we meet

 

one cannot conceive of

but by breath, by light

 

where we misplace nostalgia

project, perfect our fears

 

Sisyphus imagine, and Tantalus

or caper lush Elysium

but there can be no punishments

can be no rewards

 

‘undiscovered’ is hardly the word

no burden, voyage, nothing wanted

 

no one’s ever there

nor black hole

quark up down

 

the parts persist

yet there is no fact of them

(suggesting the former appearance of coherence

could have been a scam)

 

it’s not ‘let’s go’

though some have wished

from out of dire here, now

 

ask –

who paints the chasm black and deep

when there’s no one to see?

 

it is as imagining the animal bereft

of speech, intention, of all we know

and cannot tell the creature so

then our own lives must be the mirror

 

this is a mere necessity

back cover of the book

where pages run till, fray

 

when the bough breaks

it’s everyone’s baby

 

it isn’t a riddle at all