from Times Rhyme
Saccadic
They cannot help imagining that Socrates was making
his mouth into a flute, and puffing away at some prelude
to Athene. “I wrote that,” she said, pointing to her
handwritten copy of Zukovsky’s A. Sentences
in his head used to match those that emerged
from his mouth. Activation of the gaze centers in concert
results in oblique movements whose trajectories
are specified by the relative contribution of
each center. Centuries rhyme. All must clearly understand
the difference between the idea, say, of Peter,
which constitutes the essence of Peter’s mind, and
the idea of the said Peter, which is in
another man, say, Paul. Obligatory
apologizing for the West. Moments before death,
flesh turns off, the little bubble of soul floats away,
and only mind — pure, dazzling arctic landscape — is left.
Dice
Joice Heth is not a human being. What purports to be
a remarkably old woman, is simply a
curiously constructed automaton, made up
of whalebone, India-rubber, and springs ingeniously
put together, and made to move at the slightest touch
according to the will of the operator. Over
and over, this. Over the moon she’d gladly go, out of
the cave, away from the peacock-monster and the fly, and
rectify the time to a cow’s thumb. His imagination
will waver; and, with the imagination of future
evenings, he will associate first one, then the other —
that is, he will imagine them in the future,
neither of them as certain, but both as contingent. Spooky
action can occur at a distance. I shall never
forget the grandiose and festive air which so completely
belied the hollowness of that occasion. No one spoke, but
angry, hostile eyes followed every movement I made. And when
I wanted to sing of sorrow, it turned into love:
and so I was divided into love and sorrow. She rests
back with all her might, pebble in a hard-drawn sling.
Bridge
Y: “I left it eons ago, when radiation started
to leak.” X: “I left just now, but Ted is still back
inside.” Z is the entanglement of all three. No drama
at the event horizon. Information loss
paradox. They pause at their entryway, unwilling to
permit the golden dying of afternoon to relinquish
them. George Ives would have his boys sing in one key
while he accompanied in another; he built
instruments to produce quarter-tones; he played his cornet
over a pond so Charlie could gauge the effect
of space. And can we rightly speak of a beauty which is
always passing away, and is first this and then that;
must not the same thing be born and retire
and vanish while the word is in our mouths?