Tag: knot

  • Nothing in its Proper Place

    Nothing is the proper place of poetry
    the nothing that is and the nothing
    that is not, to slightly misquote Wallace
    Stevens, now nothing but a book on a shelf.

    Things seem round, but close reading
    show oblong, egg shaped, ellipsoid,
    particularly in the topological poem,
    where nothing expands and retracts.

    The universe is a closed knot
    the poet tries to unknot
    to pull his shoe on without
    twisting his tongue.

    Think pretzel, which is non-trivial,
    while the poem is a wild knot,
    unable to untie itself,
    non-rational, but linked within.

    What a mess, and I can’t find
    the beginning of the thread,
    nor the ending, for that matter,
    but incomprehensible I am not.