Paul Hoover
CONCERNING THE THE
"Where is it one first heard of the truth? The the."
It's a shadow standing in the shade.
Or an apple reflecting an apple.
The the makes a thing like an apple,
but two identical things, placed side by side,
make one abstraction. Two toasters, say.
The writer has his objects. He does admire.
He fills a field with man-made things,
conundra of tools and lace.
Everything they are he is again: the the,
the very specific. Include perhaps
a sandstone lion, some plastic fruit,
and at their edge a man-made lake
meant to be the mind. Wind up the fish!
Send them across it, to give the mind
its banal climate. Banal is always better.
And play Chopin on your winter piano,
let the light come down, both yes and no,
as it won't without you. The mind is climate, too.
Say it's cold and the leaves are brittle,
noisily surviving. That is your clearest moment,
intellect like an emptied forest.
Spring is the absence of thought; the mind
picks up a frog and throws it, a green blur
over the water. You " thought" it was a rock.
Or poke them both with a serious finger.
They are more they than you .
When" the" meets its beautiful second
it's like the reader diving into an absent page.
You see his shoes for an instant.
Then they disappear.
Truth is only the half of it.
