Jerome Rothenberg: A Round of Solipsisms
for my 86th birthday
“He takes a book down from his shelf & scribbles across a page of text: I am the final one. This means the world will end when he does.” (from A Paradise of Poets)
1/
the lie of consciousness
assails me waking
in the early hours
shorn of dreams
the world reduced to what
cannot be told
& scarce remembered
I am walking
mean-legged
toward a patch of forest
then a tunnel
where a train runs
from my sight
heading for a depot
I will never reach
2/
what is a dream
& where is it located?
when it ends
a blackness
fills the place called mind
unseen unheard
there is no world then
& no mind to tell us
searching for a name
the word is solipsism
what the man
almost a corpse
knows, dying
that the world will end
when he does
3/
the real a lie
as well
(the man thinks)
struggling
to hold on
& falling back
he grabs for it
fearing as he does
its vanishing
the world without him
is no world
the stars no stars
the plot of land
under his foot
has no solidity
the water leaves
no water
& the air no air
when the imagination
fades the fancy
takes its place
when all are gone
the mind shuts down
with scarce a trace
4/
for David Antin
you have died
& still
the world goes on
the strangeness
felt by us
without you
where I train
my thoughts
on all I know
& knowing
that for you
the world has fled
as it will flee
for me & all
the others
when the mind shuts
& the world
unthought
shuts with it
5/
the bloom of life
assaults me
when I fall
under its spell
happy to play
time’s fool
like other men
before me
wisdom is a lie
only the dead
can see through
& reject
the present
never there
the past
a trick of mind
how many worlds
we hold inside us
something to be shared
until it ends
6/
inside the only
world I know
the power rests
with me
the flow of light
opens in images
& ends
in darkness
I try to find you
& the others
hearing my name re-echo
in another tongue
no one can know
or wrest from me
something I carry
until the fire starts
its hidden name
apocalypse
intended for me
alone
7/
An Exhortation –
for the Survivors
“how can there be
a world
without you?”
lightly asked
& wanting
nothing less
the years once lived
stay in the mind
only in bits
predict an image
not yet real
the hope of juncture
a contingency
foretold & closed
shutting us off
but different
when we come together
in your eyes
distant like mine
& knowing
that the end will come
to me
to you
the greater world
gone in a wink
& done
absent all care
11.xii.17
Poems and poetics