Canto

How can I live   before this inquiry
flushed through the body
resolves itself in light without remainder
and all detail
flicker betwixt an essence that imparts
itself by withholding itself and an absence that
withholds itself, imparting itself
and all is known and what
is known loses itself in what there is
to be known and what there is   to be known
cannot be known    unless it lose itself
in the body’s luminous web-nets—the golden
edges of the water planes in sunlight above
the brown   bottom

the roundness of the poem’s shape
cutting off all incredulity driving
the argument, forcing the interminable toiling
of cerebral energetics through the coils of a syllogistic
yet to be descried—the evasiveness of formal
decision on either term—the poem’s
finality and the mind’s
tragicomedic earnestness to cohere

And then went down in structures of proven
stability but dubious source
to the permutations of a shining sea—
its artifacts and adventures,
its islands of periphrasis, its tropical resource
And heard the rigorous
music that withholds itself
just beyond the ear of inquiry
so that the force that drives it
cannot be brought to court
and these interminable soundings
fill up the world phase