Preliminary Process

 

Sounds diminish, but still, I listen;

struggle to discern the notes

of this musical composition.

Such isolation of senses encourages one to remember

 

All the tests have been completed.

The philosophers, for such they would be,

sit with their heads in their hands like marble statues;

like flashlights with their batteries depleted

 

Complexity does that every time.

Some relish the fact there will be a struggle.

Others practically dissolve

into an inertial ineptitude.

 

Earlier on the sky percolated,

extravasating stars; formulating galaxies with a gusto;

It was an era of impassioned expansion.

There were theories galore, enviable delight.

 

At that time, shelves of great books

were at my disposal. I was washed

in oceans of reflection; and what I saw still rouses,

still leaves me as restless as a jackal that’s been caged.

 

So just try. Ignore those defalcations of tone,

the ambient isolating perplexity of it all.

There is that which the canine ear can hear,

of which humans may never be aware.

 

Let us understand that to expect justice

is laughable. The judges,

if they exist at all, have been corrupted,

your arguments to them are like blank faces on a screen.

 

What does the primitive artist think,

who, having carved his Venus out of stone,

meets a cave bear in the darkness?

Who is there, at that moment, to propitiate?

 

The degeneracy of genes

is irrefutable. A universe

that enlarges provides more space

in which to shiver.

 

It has been conjectured that man’s mutated replacement

is already living in a gorgeous Park Avenue apartment,

and the beauteous soprano, high tones gone,

is developing wrinkles.

 

Despite seismological studies, earthquakes continue

to bedevil, and the motion of the tectonic plates

shows no evidence of abatement. Perhaps an appreciation

of basso sonority would be appropriate before that fades also.

 

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