To forget about the self at the self’s Uttermost extent; it is the self Made a self at last. To survive in vigor 5 The confinement of the eye, The glistering pinhole through which The self is summoned As by a bronze gong Until all the air is peacock feathers 10 Is one way—in wild trial— That the self, and its amiable Particulars may be forgotten. Cheered onward in a doubtful dark By numerous rumoring murmurs 15 And silken sibilances, as if Drawn on by a forceful river Tumbling a blind man downstream To the sound of thickening confusion Is another way for the self to go, 20 On and on, on and on, In dark discovery. To feel our broadening sexual silks Pulled and pulled, as through A pinhole, through the self 25 And out of the self and into Another, and that self flowing And pulling as if a river until Our colors lay piled and swollen Before our adoring, a silken sail 30 Full-bellied with desiring And with desiring only—a wind That moves through the self the self Had left behind and abandoned On the shore of no more. 35 Dead or dreaming, the self Disappears, and in its place, In the place of the self spilled out Of itself, displaced and streaming, The self that had left its eye behind 40 Like an abandoned portal, The self that had had an ear And has an ear no more, bereft, as it was, Among night voices in a dark place, The self that had had a sex 45 Torn away in a shimmering wind Until the self has a self no more, — Only this, this fathomless Wildness without a where Without a how, without a why, 50 Only this this,-in the place of that, Nearby, nearly here, In the place of the place and in place of it, A contemptuous wind Crawls like sludge 55 Over motley rocks.
From the collection "Nobody Poems"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.