William James (The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 84) is to be
commended for penning out of our finest recommendations for the bright outlook:
he was so miserable himself he knew how to put a fine point on the exact
prescription: he knew that anybody who knows anything about human
existence knows it can be heavy: in fact, it can be so heavy it can undo
its own heaviness, the knees can crumple, the breath and heart beat,
not to mention the bowels, can become irregular, etc.: but the world,
William knew, sardonic and skeptical, can characterize sufferers of such
symptoms malingering wimps, a heaviness not to be welcomed by a person who
like me feels like one of those: weight begets weight and nature works as well
(and mindlessly) down as up: you have to put English of your own into
the act misleading the way into lightenings: brightness, however
desirable, is a losing battle, though, and James knew it can be depended on
more often than not that folks won’t have spare brightnesses on them every
morning that they want your heaviness to cost them: so, in general, if
someone asks how you are, no matter how you are, say something nice: say,
“fine,” or “marvelous morning,” and, this way, hell gradually notches up
toward paradise, a misconstruction many conspire to forward because
nearly all, maybe all, prefer one to the other: oppositions make things costly:
crooked teeth encourage the symmetry of braces but as soon as everybody’s
teeth are perfect, crooked teeth misalign: something is always working
the other way: if you let the other way go, you get more in Dutch for
while the other way at first may constitute an alternative mainstream,
pretty soon it breaks up into dispersive tributaries and splinters a
rondure of fine points into branches and brooklets till it becomes
impossible to get a hold on it, a river system running backwards:
be bright: that is a wish that can be stable: you can always think of
happiness because it’s wished right out of any rubbings with reality, so
you can keep the picture pure and steady: I always imagine
a hillock, about as much as I can get up these days, with a lovely shade tree and under
the tree this beautiful girl, unnervingly young, who projects golden
worlds: this scene attracts me so much that even though I’m a little
scared by it it feels enlivening, a rosy, sweet enlivening: poets
can always prevent our hubris, reminding us how the coffin slats peel
cloth and crack in, how the onset of time strikes at birth, how love falters,
how past the past is, how the eyes of hungry children feed the flies.
“Motion Which Disestablishes Organizes Everything” originally appeared in The Hudson Review (Summer 1987) and was reprinted in The Best American Poetry 1988, ed. John Ashbery; series ed. David Lehman (New York: Scribners, 1988).