Eric Hoffman
from Entanglement
Proclamation
The people cannot exceed
the ability to feed them –
Defy this fact
and burden man with catastrophe –
If mouths outstrip what there is to eat
there will be misery among all
no matter the inequality –
These dark tints are drawn
from conviction and not
a jaundiced eye, or
spleen of disposition –
Proposals
1.
The new lights dazzle
and astonish –
revolution’s blazing comets
give new flesh to ravaged spirits,
illuminating
the fate of mankind –
2.
The question then becomes one
of narrative: or
is there only an oscillation
between happiness and misery –
3.
Nature has scattered the seeds of life
in such profusion, yet is miserly
in the means of cultivation –
Necessity restrains,
plants and animals shrink
by waste of seed, sickness and death –
Among men, it is misery and vice,
numerous waste lands,
pastures and a butcher’s meat –
horses outdistancing their sun –
titan strength in the land,
instruments
of our diminution,
a caprice of fashions
and in this truth
one finds a kernel virtue,
an ordeal that ensures
continued imperfections –
Propagations
There are no limits to the Earth
beyond its solar allotments,
the salt texture of its winds –
This fact is at its core
in razor heat, radiating outward
into the ozone, infusing
every plant and animal
impelled by instinct to increase
without doubt or interruption –
The urge infuses, bolted
into every edifice,
liberty and superabundance
repressed by nourishment,
that common core –
the fear of the Neanderthal
or the small marsupial –
the hunter and the hunted
etched into cavern walls
in firelight –
Paramnesia
By cleanliness, the plague expelled –
the ratio of burials
to births increased –
cæteris paribus –
without it, entire towns
sit silent –
That death is commonplace,
mundane,
that we ignore it at our peril,
that we have fashioned a dream of death
that is an unreality, a perception
not unlike
the framed portrait
of a young girl, poised
before her bed,
kneeling in prayer –
We are unaccustomed to reality –
A stone will fall,
a plant will rise,
and man will die
in illusion –
Yet we can foresee
the foreseeable –
tautologies –
mystic pasts
scratched
on cavern walls
Eric Hoffman's critical biography of George Oppen, Oppen: A Narrative, is out from Shearsman and the second of his ostentatiously self-designated "Canadian Cartoonists Trilogy,"Chester Brown: Conversations will be out around the same time from University Press of Mississippi. The first, Dave Sim: Conversations, was released earlier this year and the last, Seth: Conversations, should be out in 2014. Dos Madres brought out a book of selected poems this past May, By the Hours: Selected Poems Early & Uncollected.
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from Entanglement
Proclamation
The people cannot exceed
the ability to feed them –
Defy this fact
and burden man with catastrophe –
If mouths outstrip what there is to eat
there will be misery among all
no matter the inequality –
These dark tints are drawn
from conviction and not
a jaundiced eye, or
spleen of disposition –
Proposals
1.
The new lights dazzle
and astonish –
revolution’s blazing comets
give new flesh to ravaged spirits,
illuminating
the fate of mankind –
2.
The question then becomes one
of narrative: or
is there only an oscillation
between happiness and misery –
3.
Nature has scattered the seeds of life
in such profusion, yet is miserly
in the means of cultivation –
Necessity restrains,
plants and animals shrink
by waste of seed, sickness and death –
Among men, it is misery and vice,
numerous waste lands,
pastures and a butcher’s meat –
horses outdistancing their sun –
titan strength in the land,
instruments
of our diminution,
a caprice of fashions
and in this truth
one finds a kernel virtue,
an ordeal that ensures
continued imperfections –
Propagations
There are no limits to the Earth
beyond its solar allotments,
the salt texture of its winds –
This fact is at its core
in razor heat, radiating outward
into the ozone, infusing
every plant and animal
impelled by instinct to increase
without doubt or interruption –
The urge infuses, bolted
into every edifice,
liberty and superabundance
repressed by nourishment,
that common core –
the fear of the Neanderthal
or the small marsupial –
the hunter and the hunted
etched into cavern walls
in firelight –
Paramnesia
By cleanliness, the plague expelled –
the ratio of burials
to births increased –
cæteris paribus –
without it, entire towns
sit silent –
That death is commonplace,
mundane,
that we ignore it at our peril,
that we have fashioned a dream of death
that is an unreality, a perception
not unlike
the framed portrait
of a young girl, poised
before her bed,
kneeling in prayer –
We are unaccustomed to reality –
A stone will fall,
a plant will rise,
and man will die
in illusion –
Yet we can foresee
the foreseeable –
tautologies –
mystic pasts
scratched
on cavern walls
Eric Hoffman's critical biography of George Oppen, Oppen: A Narrative, is out from Shearsman and the second of his ostentatiously self-designated "Canadian Cartoonists Trilogy,"Chester Brown: Conversations will be out around the same time from University Press of Mississippi. The first, Dave Sim: Conversations, was released earlier this year and the last, Seth: Conversations, should be out in 2014. Dos Madres brought out a book of selected poems this past May, By the Hours: Selected Poems Early & Uncollected.