vanitas and freeform nothing





I think we are in rats’ alley 
Where the dead men lost their bones. 

“What is that noise?” 
                      The wind under the door. 
“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?” 
                      Nothing again nothing. 
                                              “Do 
You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember 
Nothing?” 
        I remember 
                Those are pearls that were his eyes. 
“Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?” 
                                                         But 
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag— 
It’s so elegant 
So intelligent

Is whispering nothing?

Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career
Of laughing with a sigh?--a note infallible
Of breaking honesty--horsing foot on foot?
Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift?
Hours, minutes? noon, midnight? and all eyes
Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only,
That would unseen be wicked? is this nothing?
Why, then the world and all that's in't is nothing;
The covering sky is nothing; Bohemia nothing;
My wife is nothing; nor nothing have these nothings,
If this be nothing.

"On Margate Sands. 
I can connect 
Nothing with nothing. 
The broken finger-nails of dirty hands. 
My people humble people who expect 
Nothing.” 

      la la 

To Carthage then I came 

Burning burning burning burning 
O Lord Thou pluckest me out 
O Lord Thou pluckest 

burning

You are the last I recognize; return,
pain beyond help that sears the body’s cells:
as I burnt in the spirit, see, I burn
in you; the wood, that for so long rebels
against the flame you kindle, comes of age;
behold, I nourish you and burn in you.
My earthly mildness changes in your rage
into a rage of hell I never knew.

Quite pure, quite planless, of all future free,
I climbed the stake of suffering, resolute
not to acquire what is still to be
to clad this heart whose stores had become mute.
Is it still I that burns there all alone?
Unrecognizable? memories denied?

O life, o life: being outside.
And I in flames—no one is left—unknown.

Vanitas still life with portrait; David Bailly (1650), Naked Lunch, Wasteland, Winter's Tale, Wasteland, Komm du, du Letzter; Rilke.