Via Negativa

It's early April. Only a few more days
till the day when the Moon, passing 
between the Sun and Earth, 
completely blocks the face of the Sun.  

The heavens will darken 
as if it were dawn or dusk. 
The heavens will darken ominously 
as if it were the beginning or end of time.

According to geoscientists, 
tidal stress increases during a new 
moon, a condition associated with 
a total solar eclipse.  

With all these constellations
of planetary and other movement,
tsunamis could be spreading 
right now through tectonic plates.

We're warned not to turn
our eyes directly toward the Sun.
It could burn earthquakes 
right into our brains.

Instead, we look into its reflection 
on viewing mirrors. The very trees learn
how to break it apart into hundreds 
of bright thumbnails on the ground. 

To my workmen, then to my Lord’s, and there dined with Mr. Shepley. After dinner I went in to my Lord and there we had a great deal of musique, and then came my cozen Tom Pepys and there did accept of the security which we gave him for his 1000l. that we borrow of him, and so the money to be paid next week. Then to the Privy Seal, and so with Mr. Moore to my father’s, where some friends did sup there and we with them and late went home, leaving my wife still there. So to bed.

hen in a dinner tin
we eat sand for the sea

so where
so there
and home still here

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 4 April 1661.

We found a coffeetable
at a thrift store, joyful 
that it was heavy, of solid
wood. Only a few 
nicks here and there.
A hutch 
came later—we marveled
at the way plain glassware
twinkled when a tiny light
was activated.
The rooms filled
with pictures,
gifts of books and 
ancient bows and arrows;
a staff carved from hard-
wood and smoked 
in fire on a Tibetan
mountain. 
Though now we need to,
I still can hardly give 
away the surpluses—
every drawer crammed
with dreams 
of habitation.
Those years ago,
I remember 
when we carried
a long, boxed mirror
between us up
the apartment steps.
It was Halloween; 
people handed out sweets
from their porches and
joked about how maybe
we might have packed
a body in there.

A hundred eyes
and yet no witnessing

A head aloft
on shoulders 

Pearled steps
of spine lead

nowhere except
to the mind

Someone pulled up
the ladder 

Everything from there
looks incredibly

far
away

In Dante's Inferno, for every sin there has to be
an equal and fitting punishment. Flatterers, 

seducers, grafters, hypocrites, cephalophores—
for every failing, a torture both material and 

metaphorical. Monks and friars who in life didn't take 
their vow of poverty seriously wear gilded cloaks 

of lead in hell. Those who murdered and killed 
are submerged in rivers of boiling blood, 

and the arrogant are bent over from the weight 
of boulders borne on their backs. Bertran de Born, 

knight then troubadour then monk, caused divisions 
among others, and so he is beheaded. Not only that, he

has to walk around the eighth circle of hell, carrying 
his severed head like a Coleman camping lamp.

Objectivity is said to be free of bias, free of perceptions
tinged by emotion and dreams. The problem is we

have no way of determining what that state is like,
since the moment we (think)  we approach it, we can't

help putting it on—it's like a raincoat that supposedly keeps
its wearer neutral and dry; reasonable, with deep pocketfuls

of empirical evidence whose purpose is to establish the truth
as truth. Objectivity resides in a sterile chamber without 

distraction. But since it can only be confirmed independent 
of a mind, I 'm pretty sure there are wall-to-wall mirrors.  

How else could it affirm its objectivity than by checking itself out
many times a day? The rest of us live in our porous apartments, 

where we can hear the neighbors quarrel then have make-up 
sex; and they snore, or sing loud into a karaoke machine.