On the Seawalla community gallery of new writing, art and commentary hosted by Ron Slate

Dear Deborah

            — In memoriam D.D., 1950-2009

 

Sometimes, sitting alone in a strange room,

The lobby of an overpriced hotel, or a doctor’s antechamber —

Which is, when you think about it, exactly the same thing —

I remember for an instant how the universe is holding us

Cupped in its two hands tenderly, protected

From the pit of horror it will shortly throw us into,

The black holiness, the leprous incandescence,

And I seem to feel its lifeline pressed against my cheek,

And the strange, thrilling pulse at the top of its wrist.

It’s too much for anyone to hold onto, even the poets.

Dear Deborah, Saint of the Sacred Page, the thumb

Of the Cosmos that we all are under has your face

Etched in its fleshy whorls. It’s none of my business,

Sister, that you took yourself away, but I don’t

Have to like it. Sitting wherever I am and wherever

I will be so many years after, the doctor is waiting

With her rubber tubing and stainless steel.

There are crystal vials designed to keep my blood

Safe from contamination, paper cups especially made

For my urine. The body is nothing, trembling here

Waiting for the room with its antiseptic bed

To be clarified and readied — a life suspended

Between two infinite middle fingers while the multiverse

Breathes on it, helpless to make it live forever,

 

 

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

 

The History of Western Philosophy

 

            It has become a tradition to speak of the Daemon of

            Socrates; but I hope to show that the term is without warrant

            and incorrect. — Henry Edward

 

When I think of my life as Socrates,

It’s not the Greeks I remember —

Bourgeois neighbors who wanted nothing

But advice on the Good Life, and then

My good life itself — no, it’s my Daemon,

Poor hangdog who slept at the foot

Of my pallet and barked when I dreamed

And had to be walked five times a day

To prevent his befouling my contemplation

Of the river we mentally strolled beside,

Him straining at his spiked chain before breaking

His collar and plunging in, where he turned,

Turncoat that he was, into my rival Heraclitus

Again and again in the same flowing water,

Thus repudiating the old aphorist and also me

In one last reeking breath. That was eons ago,

And as Aquinas I never thought of him once,

Nor as Kant, nor Nietzsche, nor Wittgenstein,

But here, beyond philosophy at last, I drift alone

On the same riverbank, and God, how I miss him.