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