Philip Whalen: Homage to Lucretius

HOMAGE TO LUCRETIUS

It all depends on how fast you're going

Tending towards light, sound

Or the quiet of mere polarity

                Objects: Slowness

Screen

           A walking sieve

Wide-open and nowhere

The mountains themselves

Picked up into turnips, trees

Wander as bones, nails, horns

And we want crystals,

Given a handful of mercury

        (Which can be frozen into a pattern vulnerable to body heat)

The notion intimidates us

We can't easily imagine another world

This one being barely

Visible:

          We lined up and pissed in a snowbank

          A slight thaw would expose

          Three tubes of yellow ice

And so on....

A world not entirely new

But realized,

The process clarified

Bless your little pointed head!

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