Revision: Recent Episodes
Revision
Weights hanging over table edge attached to trolley, trolley travels to the right (uniform speed or acceleration), paper tape moves with same acceleration/speed, TTT puts 50 dots per second on tape, time interval between consecutive dots-0.02s, examine pattern of dots, accuracy-take several spaces in calculations (smaller % error)
On the stiff twig up there Hunches a wet black rook Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain. I do not expect a miracle Or an accident
To set the sight on fire In my eye, not seek Any more in the desultory weather some design, But let spotted leaves fall as they fall, Without ceremony, or portent.
Although, I admit, I desire, Occasionally, some backtalk From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain: A certain minor light may still Leap incandescent
Out of the kitchen table or chair As if a celestial burning took Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then --- Thus hallowing an interval Otherwise inconsequent
By bestowing largesse, honor, One might say love. At any rate, I now walk Wary (for it could happen Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); sceptical, Yet politic; ignorant
Of whatever angel may choose to flare Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook Ordering its black feathers can so shine As to seize my senses, haul My eyelids up, and grant
A brief respite from fear Of total neutrality. With luck, Trekking stubborn through this season Of fatigue, I shall Patch together a content
Of sorts. Miracles occur, If you care to call those spasmodic Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again, The long wait for the angel. For that rare, random descent.
Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry Took its place among the elements.
Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue. In a drafty museum, your nakedness Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.
I’m no more your mother Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow Effacement at the wind’s hand.
All night your moth-breath Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen: A far sea moves in my ear.
One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral In my Victorian nightgown. Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square
Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try Your handful of notes; The clear vowels rise like balloons.
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful ‚ The eye of a little god, four-cornered. Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers. Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, Searching my reaches for what she really is. Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. I see her back, and reflect it faithfully. She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. I am important to her. She comes and goes. Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root: It is what you fear. I do not fear it: I have been there.
Is it the sea you hear in me, Its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?
Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.
All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously, Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf, Echoing, echoing.
Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons? This is rain now, this big hush. And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.
I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets. Scorched to the root My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.
Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs. A wind of such violence Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.
The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me Cruelly, being barren. Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.
I let her go. I let her go Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery. How your bad dreams possess and endow me.
I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.
I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.
Clouds pass and disperse. Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart?
I am incapable of more knowledge. What is this, this face So murderous in its strangle of branches?——
Its snaky acids hiss. It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults That kill, that kill, that kill.
Little poppies, little hell flames, Do you do no harm?
You flicker. I cannot touch you. I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns
And it exhausts me to watch you Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.
A mouth just bloodied. Little bloody skirts!
There are fumes I cannot touch. Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?
If I could bleed, or sleep! - If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!
Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule, Dulling and stilling.
But colorless. Colorless.
I ordered this, clean wood box Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift. I would say it was the coffin of a midget Or a square baby Were there not such a din in it.
The box is locked, it is dangerous. I have to live with it overnight And I can't keep away from it. There are no windows, so I can't see what is in there. There is only a little grid, no exit.
I put my eye to the grid. It is dark, dark, With the swarmy feeling of African hands Minute and shrunk for export, Black on black, angrily clambering.
How can I let them out? It is the noise that appals me most of all, The unintelligible syllables. It is like a Roman mob, Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!
I lay my ear to furious Latin. I am not a Caesar. I have simply ordered a box of maniacs. They can be sent back. They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.
I wonder how hungry they are. I wonder if they would forget me If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree. There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades, And the petticoats of the cherry.
They might ignore me immediately In my moon suit and funeral veil. I am no source of honey So why should they turn on me? Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.
The box is only temporary.
Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing. I want to fill it with color and ducks, The zoo of the new
Whose names you meditate --- April snowdrop, Indian pipe, Little
Stalk without wrinkle, Pool in which images Should be grand and classical
Not this troublous Wringing of hands, this dark Ceiling without a star.