Someone should have shown you—little jester,
Little teaser, blue-veined charm-
er, laughing-eyed, lionised, sylvan-princessly
Sinner—to what point you would come

It’s tight like this
···
Now it’s closed like that.

And Rilke whom die Dinge bless,
The Santa Claus of loneliness

at ego adulescens miser valde, miserior in exordio ipsius adulescentiae, etiam petieram a te castitatem et dixeram: da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo. timebam enim, ne me cito exaudires et cito sanares a morbo concupiscentiae, quem malebam expleri quam exstingui.

〈But I was a very wretched young man, even more wretched early in my youth when I prayed to you for chastity and said: ‘Grant me chastity and continence, just not yet.’ I was afraid you would hear my prayer swiftly and swiftly heal me of the disease of lust, which I preferred to glut myself on rather than to douse.〉

Ô douleur! ô douleur! Le Temps mange la vie
〈Time consumes existence pain with pain〉

Merry merry sparrow!
Under leaves so green
A happy blossom
Sees you swift as arrow
Seek your cradle narrow
Near my bosom.

Pretty pretty robin!
Under leaves so green
A happy blossom
Hears you sobbing sobbing
Pretty pretty robin
Near my bosom.

No escribe los primeros contactos de la realidad, sino su elaboración final en concepto.
〈[The classical writer] does not write reality’s initial contacts, but its final elaboration in concepts.〉

Yo aconsejaría esta hipótesis: la imprecisión es tolerable o verosímil en la literatura, porque a ella propendemos siempre en la realidad. La simplificación conceptual de estados complejos es muchas veces una operación instantánea. El hecho mismo de percibir, de atender, es de orden selectivo: toda atención, toda fijación de nuestra conciencia, comporta una deliberada omisión de lo no interesante. Vemos y oímos a través de recuerdos, de temores, de previsiones. En lo corporal, la inconsciencia es una necesidad de los actos físicos. Nuestro cuerpo sabe articular este difícil párrafo, sabe tratar con escaleras, con nudos, con pasos a nivel, con ciudades, con ríos correntosos, con perros, sabe atravesar una calle sin que nos aniquile el tránsito, sabe engendrar, sabe respirar, sabe dormir, sabe tal vez matar: nuestro cuerpo, no nuestra inteligencia. Nuestro vivir es una serie de adaptaciones, vale decir, una educación del olvido. Es admirable que la primer noticia de Utopía que nos dé Thomas Moore, sea su perpleja ignorancia de la «verdadera» longitud de uno de sus puentes…

〈I would recommend this hypothesis: imprecision is tolerable or plausible in literature because we almost always tend toward it in reality. The conceptual simplification of complex states is often an instantaneous operation. The very fact of perceiving, of paying attention, is selective; all attention, all focusing of our consciousness, involves a deliberate omission of what is not interesting. We see and hear through memories, fears, expectations. In bodily terms, unconsciousness is a necessary condition of physical acts. Our body knows how to articulate this difficult paragraph, how to contend with stairways, knots, overpasses, cities, fast-running rivers, dogs, how to cross the street without being run down by traffic, how to procreate, how to breathe, how to sleep, and perhaps how to kill: our body, not our intellect. For us, living is a series of adaptations, which is to say, an education in oblivion. It is admirable that the first news of Utopia Thomas More gives us is his puzzled ignorance of the “true” length of one of its bridges…〉

Hey man, oh leave me alone you know
Hey man, oh Henry, get off the phone, I gotta
Hey man, I gotta straighten my face
This mellow thighed chick just put my spine out of place
Hey man, my schooldays insane
Hey man, my work’s down the drain
Hey man, well she’s a total blam-blam
She said she had to squeeze it but she then she

Oh don’t lean on me man, ’cause you can’t afford the ticket
I’m back on Suffragette City
Oh don’t lean on me man
’Cause you ain’t got time to check it
You know my Suffragette City
Is outta sight she’s all right

Qué pasa, people, qué pasa, hit me!

I would to heaven that I were so much clay,
As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling —
Because at least the past were passed away —
And for the future — (but I write this reeling,
Having got drunk exceedingly today,
So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling)
I say — the future is a serious matter —
And so — for God’s sake— hock and soda water!

Metaphysiker sind Musiker ohne musikalische Fähigkeit.
〈Metaphysicians are musicians without musical talent.〉

There are popular expressions which every one uses and no one can explain; which the wise man will accept and reverence, as he reverences desire or darkness or any elemental thing.

“You wanna play mind-crazed banjo
On the druggy-drag ragtime USA?
In Parkland International, hah, Junkiedom USA
Where Procaine proves the purest rock man groove and rat poison”
The volatile Molotov says
“Huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh
Huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, straight to hell”

Can you cough it up, loud and strong?
The immigrants, they wanna sing all night long
It could be anywhere, most likely could be any frontier
Any hemisphere
No man’s land
There ain’t no asylum here
King Solomon, he never lived ’round here

Straight to hell, boy
Go straight to hell, boy
Go straight to hell, boys
Go straight to hell, boys
Oh papa-san, please take me home
Oh papa-san, everybody, they wanna go home now

He’s a fucker.

Embrace the mystery.

“And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the Earth.”

There were moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare for yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention.

Get out of that bed,
Go wash your face and hands
Get out of that bed,
Go wash your face and hands
Get into that kitchen
Make some noise with the pots and pans

And ah you’re wearing them dresses
The sun come shining through, yeah
Ah you’re wearing them dresses
The sun come shining through
I can’t believe my eyes
All of that belong to you

Now I believe to my soul
You’re the Devil in nylon hose
Listen, I believe to my soul
You’re the Devil in nylon hose
Oh, you won’t do right to save your natural soul

And all you want to do is, shake rattle and roll
Every morning, shake rattle and roll
With the feeling, shake rattle and roll
Seem to like it, shake rattle and roll
Every morning, shake rattle and roll
Oh you’re doing it, shake rattle and roll

I’m like a one-eyed cat
Peeping in a seafood store — you don’t hear me
I’m like a one-eyed cat
Peeping in a seafood store
I can look at you and tell ya ain’t no child no more

And all you want to do is, shake rattle and roll
…

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers

I am frightfully confused by time and place…

He knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart.

And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me,
heap of ashes that I am, into fire…

Le point important est d’aller aisément, librement, agréablement, copieusement tous les soirs à la garderobe. O stercus pretiosum!
〈The most important point [for happiness] is to go easily, freely, pleasantly, copiously every evening on the chamberpot. 〈O noble turd!〉〉

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

The monk… bought… lunch

He bought a little (Yes, he did)
This is the best part of the trip
This is the trip, the best part
I really like (What’d he say?)

Yeah

Yeah, right
Pretty good

Yeah, I’m proud to be a part of this number

Johnny’s in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
I’m on the pavement
Thinking about the government
The man in the trench coat
Badge out, laid off
Says he’s got a bad cough
Wants to get it paid off
Look out kid
It’s somethin’ you did
God knows when
But you’re doin’ it again
You better duck down the alley way
Lookin’ for a new friend
The man in the coon-skin cap
By the big pen
Wants eleven dollar bills
You only got ten

2. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

3. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?

4. One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.

5. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.

6. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.

7. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

8. All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

9. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

10. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.

11. There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

15. That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.

17. And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.

18. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

If we are to surround ourselves with a perceptual world at all, we must recognize as substance that which has some element of permanence. We may not be able to explain how the mind recognizes as substantial the world-tensor [R^a_b - 1/2 δ^a_b R, viz., the Einstein tensor], but we can see that it could not well recognize anything simpler. There are no doubt minds which have not this predisposition to regard as substantial the things which are permanent; but we shut them up in lunatic asylums.

I have been boomeranged across my head so much that I now can see the darkness of lightness.

It seems like a man can just about bear anything. He can even bear what he never done. He can even bear the thinking how some things is just more than he can bear. He can even bear it that if he could just give down and cry, he wouldn’t do it. He can even bear it to not look back, even when he knows that looking back or not looking back won’t do him any good.

How can you stand living like this? It’s not right to lie all the time, never letting people know what’s true and what’s false. Is it possible that for you it’s all the same… everything?

What monstrous presumption, to think that others could benefit from the squalid catalog of your mistakes.

I’ve got this can of gasoline
I think you know what I mean

La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain.
〈The majestic equality of the law, that forbids the rich and the poor alike from sleeping under bridges, from begging in the streets and from stealing bread.〉

Wenn wirklich die Definition jeder einzelnen Zahl eine besondere physikalische Thatsache behauptete, so würde man einen Mann, der mit neunziffrigen Zahlen rechnet, nicht genug wegen seines physikalischen Wissens bewundern können.

〈If the definition of each individual number did really assert a special physical fact, then we should never be able sufficiently to admire, for his knowledge of nature, a man who calculates with nine-figure numbers.〉

Es wird aber behauptet, daß jeder von uns sich in irgendeinem Punkte ähnlich wie der Paranoiker benimmt, eine ihm unleidliche Seite der Welt durch eine Wunschbildung korrigiert und diesen Wahn in die Realität einträgt. Eine besondere Bedeutung beansprucht der Fall, daß eine größere Anzahl von Menschen gemeinsam den Versuch unternimmt, sich Glücksversicherung und Leidensschutz durch wahnhafte Umbildung der Wirklichkeit zu schaffen.

〈It is asserted that each of us in some way behaves like a paranoiac, employing wishful thinking to correct some unendurable aspect of the world and introducing this delusion into reality. Of special importance is the case in which substantial numbers of people, acting in concert, try to assure themselves of happiness and protection against suffering through a delusional reshaping of reality.〉

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo
in the machinery of night

ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time—

to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and
intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the
rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after
death,
and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s
naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last
radio
with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

Geschrieben steht: „im Anfang war das Wort!“
Hier stock’ ich schon! Wer hilft mir weiter fort?
Ich kann das Wort so hoch unmöglich schätzen,
Ich muß es anders übersetzen,
Wenn ich vom Geiste recht erleuchtet bin.
Geschrieben steht: im Anfang war der Sinn.
Bedenke wohl die erste Zeile,
Daß deine Feder sich nicht übereile!
Ist es der Sinn, der alles wirkt und schafft?
Es sollte stehn: im Anfang war die Kraft!
Doch, auch indem ich dieses niederschreibe,
Schon warnt mich was, daß ich dabey nicht bleibe.
Mir hilft der Geist! auf einmal seh ich Rath
Und schreibe getrost: im Anfang war die That!

〈It is written: “In the beginning was the Word.”
Here I already halt! Who’ll help me forward?
I cannot possibly appraise the word so highly,
I must translate it differently,
If the spirit rightly enlightens me.
It is written: in the beginning was the Meaning.
Think well on the first line,
That your pen not run away with you!
Is it the Sense that effects and regulates all?
It should say: in the beginning was the Power!
Yet even in writing it down,
Already something warns me I’ll not stay with it.
The Spirit helps me! At once I see counsel
And confidently write: in the beginning was the Deed!〉

From misery she misses me,
Forever wasting time—
It’s a metal box in here

If I knew the way I would take you home

Die Erscheinung ist das Entstehen und Vergehen, das selbst nicht entsteht und vergeht, sondern an sich ist, und die Wirklichkeit und Bewegung des Lebens der Wahrheit ausmacht. Das Wahre ist so der bacchantische Taumel, an dem kein Glied nicht trunken ist, und weil jedes, indem es sich absondert, ebenso unmittelbar auflöst, — ist er ebenso die durchsichtige und einfache Ruhe.

〈Appearance is both an emergence and a passing away that does not itself emerge and pass away, but rather is in itself, constituting the actuality and the living movement of truth. Truth is the Bacchanalian revel in which no celebrant is not drunk, because each, by being themselves separate, is even so dissolved immediately in it — is, even so, transparently and simply at rest.〉

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness;
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction;
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher;
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribands to flow confusedly;
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat;
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.

And who over the ruins of his life pursued its fleeting, fluttering significance, while he suffered its seeming meaninglessness and lived its seeming madness, and who hoped in secret at the last turn of the labyrinth of Chaos for revelation and God’s presence?

ἄγριον ἐν στήθεσσι θέτο μεγαλήτορα θυμὸν
σχέτλιος, οὐδὲ μετατρέπεται φιλότητος ἑταίρων
τῆς ᾗ μιν παρὰ νηυσὶν ἐτίομεν ἔξοχον ἄλλων
νηλής: καὶ μέν τίς τε κασιγνήτοιο φονῆος
ποινὴν ἢ οὗ παιδὸς ἐδέξατο τεθνηῶτος:
καί ῥ᾽ ὃ μὲν ἐν δήμῳ μένει αὐτοῦ πόλλ᾽ ἀποτίσας,
τοῦ δέ τ᾽ ἐρητύεται κραδίη καὶ θυμὸς ἀγήνωρ
ποινὴν δεξαμένῳ: σοὶ δ᾽ ἄληκτόν τε κακόν τε
θυμὸν ἐνὶ στήθεσσι θεοὶ θέσαν εἵνεκα κούρης
οἴης: νῦν δέ τοι ἑπτὰ παρίσχομεν ἔξοχ᾽ ἀρίστας,
ἄλλά τε πόλλ᾽ ἐπὶ τῇσι: σὺ δ᾽ ἵλαον ἔνθεο θυμόν,
αἴδεσσαι δὲ μέλαθρον: ὑπωρόφιοι δέ τοί εἰμεν
πληθύος ἐκ Δαναῶν, μέμαμεν δέ τοι ἔξοχον ἄλλων
κήδιστοί τ᾽ ἔμεναι καὶ φίλτατοι ὅσσοι Ἀχαιοί.

has made savage the proud-hearted spirit within his body.
He is hard, and does not remember that friends’ affection
wherein we honored him by the ships, far beyond all others.
Pitiless. And yet a man takes from his brother’s slayer
the blood price, or the price for a child who was killed, and the guilty
one, when he has largely repaid, stays still in the country,
and the injured man’s heart is curbed, and his pride, and his anger
when he has taken the price; but the gods put in your breast a spirit
not to be placated, bad, for the sake of one single
girl. Yet now we offer you seven, surpassingly lovely,
and much beside these. Now make gracious the spirit within you.
Respect your own house; see, we are under the same roof with you,
from the multitude of the Danaäns, we who desire beyond all
others to have your honor and love, out of all the Achaians.〉 .

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, — the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

Der Mangel an Urteilskraft ist eigentlich das, was man Dummheit nennt, und einem solchen Gebrechen ist gar nicht abzuhelfen.
〈The lack of the power of judgment is what is properly called stupidity, and for such a failing there is no remedy.〉

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing.

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody, except my own confusion.

A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.

So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.

A woman like that would drink you down to the dregs and leave you half-dead in the gutter with a smile on your face. There was a great deal to be said for that.

Grown folk go blind, lost in their toil and dreams, unless they have a profession such as thieving which keeps them mindful of things as they really are.

I would like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we’ve passed the audition.

But I am into the intellectual thing. I went to college, I studied the great philosophers, Soh-crates. I studied Plah-toe. And, ya know, you learn the important things, like if you’re studying geology, which is all facts, as soon as you get out of school, you forget it all, ya know, coz it’s just numbers and things, but philosophy you remember just enough to screw you up for the rest of your life.

Ahhh, it’s so hard, ya know, it’s so hard to believe in anything anymore, ya know what I mean? It’s like religion, you can’t really take it seriously, because it seems so mythological and it seems so arbitrary, and then on the other hand, science is just pure empiricism, and by virtue of its method it excludes metaphysics. And I guess I wouldn’t believe in anything if it weren’t for my Lucky Astrology Mood-Watch.

Abashed the devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

Je ne dis les autres, sinon pour d’autant plus me dire.
〈I quote others only the better to express myself.〉

[C]e que je ne puis exprimer, je le montre au doigt.
〈[W]hat I cannot express I point to with my finger.〉

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Escribir, por ejemplo: “La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos”.

〈Tonight I can write the saddest verses.

Write, for example: “The night is shattered,
and they whirl, blue, the stars, in the distance.”〉

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.

〈I no longer want her, it is certain, but perhaps I want her.
Love is so short, and forgetting so long.〉

Und verloren sei uns der Tag, wo nicht einmal getanzt wurde! Und falsch heiße uns jede Wahrheit, bei der es nicht ein Gelächter gab!
〈And lost to us is the day wherein there has not even been dancing! And we name false every truth that did not make us laugh!〉

All human affairs rest upon probabilities, and the same thing is true everywhere. If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death.

ἔστι δὴ τοίνυν τὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων πράγματα μεγάλης μὲν σπουδῆς οὐκ ἄξια, ἀναγκαῖόν γε μὴν σπουδάζειν.
〈The affairs of human beings are not worthy of great seriousness, and yet we must take them seriously.〉

If you want to make it, Young Man,
you got to make somebody come

Nor has life in it aught better
Than this hour of clear coolness,
the hour of waking together.

[C]e qui rapproche, ce n’est pas la communauté des opinions, c’est la consanguinité des esprits.
〈Brotherhood of men comes not from community of thought but from consanguinity of mind.〉 [trans. C. K. Scott Moncrief]

What bizarre shit?

Oh, he feels a raving fit coming on—how the bloody hell can he survive without her? She is the British warm that protects his stooping shoulders, and the wintering sparrow he holds inside his hands. She is his deepest innocence in spaces of bough and hay before wishes were given a separate name to warn that they might not come true, and his lithe Parisian daughter of joy, beneath the eternal mirror, forswearing perfumes, capeskin to the armpits, all that is too easy, for his impoverishment and more worthy love.

You go from dream to dream inside me. You have passage to my last shabby corner, and there, among the debris, you’ve found life. I’m no longer sure which of all the words, images, dreams or ghosts are “yours” and which are “mine”. It’s past sorting out. We’re both being someone new now, someone incredible…

He is crying for persons, places, and things left behind: for Scorpia Mossmoon, living in St. John’s Wood among sheet-music, new recipes, a small kennel of Weimaraners whose racial purity she will go to extravagant lengths to preserve, and husband Clive who shows up now and then, Scorpia living only a few minutes away by Underground but lost to Pirate now for good, no chance for either of them to turn again … for people he had to betray in the course of business for the Firm, Englishmen and foreigners, for Ion so naïve, for Gongylakis, for the Monkey Girl and the pimps in Rome, for Bruce who got burned … for nights up in partisan mountains when he was one with the smell of living trees, in full love with the at last undeniable beauty of the night … for a girl back in the Midlands named Virginia, and for their child who never came to pass … for his dead mother, and his dying father, for the innocent and the fools who are going to trust him, poor faces doomed as dogs who have watched us so amiably from behind the wire fences at the city pounds … cries for the future he can see, because it makes him feel so desperate and cold. He is to be taken from high moment to high moment, standing by at meetings of the Elect, witnessing a test of the new Cosmic Bomb—“Well,” a wise old face, handing him the black-lensed glasses, “there’s your Bomb …” turning then to see its thick yellow exploding down the beach, across the leagues of Pacific waves … touching famous assassins, yes actually touching their human hands and faces … finding out one day how long ago, how early in the game the contract on his own life was let. No one knows exactly when the hit will come—every morning, before the markets open, out before the milkmen, They make Their new update, and decide on what’s going to be sufficient unto the day. Every morning Pirate’s name will be on a list, and one morning it will be close enough to the top. He tries to face it, though it fills him with a terror so pure, so cold, he thinks for a minute he’ll pass out. Later, having drawn back a bit, gathering heart for the next sortie, it seems to him he’s done with the shame, just as Sir Stephen said, yes past the old shame and scared now, full of worry for nothing but his own ass, his precious, condemned, personal ass….

“Rocketman’s here,” Krypton tugging at Bodine’s damp wrinkled collar, “in a pig suit.”….

“Rocketman, holy shit, it really is…”

Seaman Bodine looks up suddenly, canny, unshaven face stung by all the smoke and unawareness in the room. He’s looking straight at Slothrop (being one of the few who can still see Slothrop as any sort of integral creature any more. Most of the others gave up long ago trying to hold him together, even as a concept—“It’s just got too remote”’s what they usually say). Does Bodine now feel his own strength may someday soon not be enough either: that soon, like all the others, he’ll have to let go? But somebody’s got to hold on, it can’t happen to all of us—no, that’d be too much … Rocketman, Rocketman. You poor fucker.

If I could be anything
In the world that flew
I would be a bat and come
Swooping after you
And if the last time you were here
Things were a bit askew

Well, you know what happens after dark
When rattlesnakes lose their skins and their hearts
And all the missionaries lose their bark

Oh, all the trees are calling after you
And all the venom snipers after you
Are all the mountains boulder after you

If I could be any one of the things
In this world that bite
Instead of a dentured ocelot on a leash
I’d rather be a kite
And be tied to the end of your string
And flying in the air, babe, at night

’Cause you know what they say about honey bears
When you shave off all their baby hair
You have a hairy minded pink bare bear

She got a lot of what they call the most.

Wenn irgendwo ein Kindgewesensein
tief in mir aufsteigt, das ich noch nicht kenne,
vielleicht das reinste Kindsein meiner Kindheit:
ich wills nicht wissen. Einen Engel will
ich daraus bilden ohne hinzusehn
und will ihn werfen in die erste Reihe
schreiender Engel, welche Gott erinnern.

Denn dieses Leiden dauert schon zu lang,
und keiner kanns; es ist zu schwer für uns,
das wirre Leiden von der falschen Liebe,
die, bauend auf Verjährung wie Gewohnheit,
ein Recht sich nennt und wuchert aus dem Unrecht.

〈When somewhere from deep within me arises
the essence of having been a child, that I still do not know,
perhaps the purest essence of my childhood:
I do not want to know it. I will form an angel
from it without looking at it
and I will hurl it into the first row
of angels screaming out, reminding God.

For this suffering has lasted too long,
no one can bear it; it is too heavy for us,
this tangled suffering of spurious love
that, building on convention like a habit,
calls itself just, and fattens on injustice.〉

Denn das ist Schuld, wenn irgendeines Schuld ist:
die Freiheit eines Lieben nicht vermehren
um alle Freiheit, die man in sich aufbringt.
Wir haben, wo wir lieben, ja nur dies:
einander lassen; denn daß wir uns halten,
das fällt uns leicht und ist nicht erst zu lernen.

〈For this is wrong, if anything is wrong:
not to enlarge the freedom of a love
to all the freedom one can summon in oneself.
We need, in love, to practice only this:
letting each other go; for holding on
comes easily to us; we do not need to learn it.〉

… Sieh, wir gleiten so,
nicht wissend wann, zurück aus unserm Fortschritt
in irgendwas, was wir nicht meinen; drin
wir uns verfangen wie in einem Traum
und drin wir sterben, ohne zu erwachen.
Keiner ist weiter. Jedem, der sein Blut
hinaufhob in ein Werk, das lange wird,
kann es geschehen, daß ers nicht mehr hochhält
und daß es geht nach seiner Schwere, wertlos.
Denn irgendwo ist eine alte Feindschaft
zwischen dem Leben und der großen Arbeit.
Daß ich sie einseh und sie sage: hilf mir.

〈… See, we slip so easily,
not even knowing when, back from what we have achieved,
into something we never intended; find
we are trapped there, as in a dream,
and there we die, without ever awaking.
No one is beyond it. Anyone who has lifted
his blood into a years-long work
may find that he can’t sustain it,
and that its weight drags it back down, worthless.
For somewhere there is an ancient enmity
between our daily life and the great work.
Help me, in saying it, to understand it.〉

Don’t believe me, just watch!

I set a trap for rap that’s crap

The mind of the most rational among us may be compared to a stormy ocean of passionate convictions based upon desire, upon which float perilously a few tiny boats carrying a cargo of scientifically tested beliefs. Nor is this to be altogether deplored: life has to be lived, and there is no time to test rationally all the beliefs by which our conduct is regulated. Without a certain wholesome rashness, no one could long survive.

[L]a perfection soit atteinte non quand il n’y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n’y a plus rien à retrancher.
〈Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when nothing is left to take away.〉

Nací en Jamaica pero vivo donde quiero
〈I was born in Jamaica but I live where I want.〉

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

I am but mad north-north-west:
when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.

Are you loving how you’re living
Is it treating you well
Do you greet the early morning alone
Are you leaving who’s loving you
In spite of it all
Are you closing it down
To get away from it all
Goodbye my friend
Can’t see you again
It’s the beginning of the end

And the poets down here don’t write nothin’ at all
They just stand back and let it all be

Was a has-been
Now’s an am-is
The kid laughs and he says,
“I don’t need no pig stompin’ on my buzz”

Aristotle tells us (Posterior Analytics i 9) that it is hard to know whether one knows, and (Metaphysics i 2, 982^b12, 983^a12-21) that philosophy begins in wonder, but ends in the contrary state. Plato never wrote the hinted-at sequel to the Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman, to have been called the Philosopher. I have long cherished the fantasy, anachronistic though it be, that in that work Socrates, questioning Aristotle, would have led him to admit that it is impossible to know whether one knows, and that if wisdom is the contrary state to wonder, then philosophy never ends.

I own I never could envy Didius in these kinds of fancies of his:—But every man to his own taste.—Did not Dr. Kunastrokius, that great man, at his leisure hours, take the greatest delight imaginable in combing of asses tails, and plucking the dead hairs out with his teeth, though he had tweezers always in his pocket? Nay, if you come to that, Sir, have not the wisest of men in all ages, not excepting Solomon himself,—have they not had their Hobby-Horses;—their running horses,—their coins and their cockle-shells, their drums and their trumpets, their fiddles, their pallets,—their maggots and their butterflies?—and so long as a man rides his Hobby-Horse peaceably and quietly along the King’s highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him,—pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?

The mind, which is our being, wrong and wrong,
The genius of the body, which is our world,
Spent in the false engagements of the mind.

When the phantoms are gone and the shaken realist
First sees reality. The mortal no
Has its emptiness and tragic expirations.
The tragedy however may have begun,
Again, in the imagination’s new beginning,
In the yes of the realist spoken because he must
Say yes, spoken because under every no
Lay a passion for yes that had never been broken.

Ah God, that love were as a flower or flame,
That life were as the naming of a name,
That death were not more pitiful than desire,
That these things were not one thing and the same!

Las Vegas is not a good town for psychedelics. Reality itself is too twisted.

Dogs fucked the Pope? No fault of mine.

Do they pay you to fuck that bear?

A kiss on the head—wipes away misery.
I kiss your head.

A kiss on the eyes—takes away sleeplessness.
I kiss your eyes.

A kiss on the lips—quenches the deepest thirst.
I kiss your lips.

A kiss on the head—wipes away memory.
I kiss your head.

Some people, they like to go out dancin’
And other peoples, they have to work, just watch me now
And there’s even some evil mothers
Well, they’re gonna tell you that everything is just dirt

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

The vague accuracy of events
dancing two by two with language,
which they forever surpass

All the young beauty in the world dwelt for him in that face that had kept wonder, had kept innocency, had lived in such immortal blindness to the terror and foulness of the world.

[E]ven a newspaper man, if you entice him into a cemetery at midnight, will believe in phantoms, for every one is a visionary, if you scratch him deep enough.

Guess you only get one chance in life
To play a song that goes like…