The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

beat, drop, beat, drop, waiting for the next thing, always waiting for the next thing, beat, stop, time stops, jerks, wait, in, out, dancing like Saint Vitus, sanctus, hoary heads with grinning jawbones — two jews walk, across broken fallen marble — foxes dart in and out and over ruins — time both stopped and incessantly continuing — “grass will grow in your jawbone,” says one — the other is silent, thinking of purposes and endings —

has the universe broken itself? did we break it, with our rapid-fire h-bombs, and the numbing whine of TV static barely heard? “sky is the color of television, tuned to a dead station” says one, and the world twists again, time moving, not moving, and here we sit bloodshot eyes into liquid crystal displays of varying resolutions, psychic tentacles reaching out to each other looking for new wombs and new navels — “they are all alike,” spake mulligan, “but this one is the omphalos” — written seventy years ago about ninety years ago — they were already modern then.

No. I say it (who is I? I am I? Dr. Seussical’s musical meters, last poetry we ever read) I say it and I say that here is not there and then is not now, I know that then is not know, I’ve smelled the rosewood rising from that heavy burden, last final duty to a stranger, other-father, delivering a package to the dancehall — it was snowy, it was snowy, I had shaved my beard, and the coffin was heavier than anything and at the same time not heavy enough, there was no smell of rosewood, there was no smell of anything, there was only the weight, and time is not broken, it is we who are broken, cut off from each other, locking in the dying in white rooms, in through a hospital and out through a hospital, and there’s men pulling levers standing behind curtains, and we look, and we think we understand: “Ah, yes, there was no great and powerful,” “there are no mysteries” and yet the road beneath us is yellow, and we’re wearing redshoes but we can’t do it, we’re not Dorothy, there’s no going back or home, there’s only going forward –

Compared to that, compared to graveyards and snowbanks, and absences that last forever — to say that time has stopped — to wondere where the next thing is — silliness silliness tragical silliness — sometimes I am comforted and sometimes I am not and sometimes I am comforted and sometimes I am not and sometimes I am comforted and sometimes I am not and I’ve never been to California but I think I might great problem of the future contingents who sees does it exist not yet not yet not yet not yet