print on a rock, the mistaken
recognition of his mind,
was sublime only in scope:
an American sentiment of hope,
the dozen roads not taken
in a grander undertaking.
This
project leans
to the left: a wobbly cabin
in the woods, a garden full
of beans, the buzz of bees
like hymns made in his restive ,
dubious workshop with a lathe .
And having once seen, saw
once and for all the perfect
life: the speaker and the spoken
to, arranged in perfect
resonance: the book and the world
declaring to the silent stars.
The offspring of thought -
the act - moves and removes
itself. The weeds proliferate
in just proportion to the need
for work. Clean -
of necessity redefined -
things and the ghost
of anger remain, blinking
into the dark, then
into the light. Unthinking,
the thinker turns into the worker.
Guilty and blameless, the shirker
shrinks back into the secret
woods, where the incontrovertible tax
of men and arms and a world
