Always there is a retreating figure
Dry rocks, a heath, some twigs
Where authority breaks down experiment escorts us
Dry rocks then tempest and then rags
Ragelight and then gradually
A breaking in the mind like something lashed unlashed
The mind different then, a river lapping its banks
No longer insisting it's only plunge and tremor
The banks mossy as when softness lures and bewilders the bewildered heart
. . .
Always there is a retreating figure
The sky unremarkable above it
The earth radioactive or not, the power lines buzzing or not
Phones in each of the houses or phones not yet invented
Or phones already obsolete
It's hard to walk for so long year in year out but the figure walks it walks
Is it blind has it a stick has it a daughter
Somewhere the built world going on about its business
Somewhere buildings crowding ever closer
. . .
Always there is a retreating figure
(But my skin is almost nothing now, a tapestry of doubts, a tablet evanescing)
All around it the quiet bedlam of each fact
What's conclusive or not, newly proven or not
Then the conclusions contradicted, the conclusions revised or thrown away
What does it want where is it going
Its feet registering the unevenness of earth
(If there were an otherwise in me, if I could feel a clean extinction)
Bare rocks up ahead bare rocks behind it
And in its ears the heavy silence of the balance sheets, the tallies
Then the ledgers tearing
The ledgers burning free
