42

can you make nothing interesting:
what is the first thing you would

encounter on the first rim of nothing:
why, a smell: a kind of a smell:

that’s right: I reckon: smegma
afloat in the round of a bauble of

pussy piss: that is vulgar: that
is so vulgar: Wallace Stevens wd

never say anything like that: or
think it: or smell it: I do not see

how the technique of poetry could be
reduced farther than this: so this

must be the rim bounding nothing:
smegma, though, is probably populous

under the microscope, the dead paste
of epithelial cells would be a living

broil of carefully crafted life:
there must be something closer to

nothing than smegma—or even the
smell of smegma: think how complex

smell is: a single whole piece of
smegma, one part in a million parts,

capable of alerting nerve ends in,
you know, the nose: there you go:

dragging in a prominent structure
already, a face fixture—oops, there

goes a face on a head on a body, no
we were going the other way: I tell

you, you better be ready to look
about before you find nothing, it

may not be so easy to find: people
always talking nothing, wonder

if they’ve ever seen any: we have
weather enough this morning without

a forecast: (snow midNov) the upper
branches of the great trees weightily

woggle: the birch bunch tips over
to the ground: the shrubbery skews

and splits: no birds sing: all is
closed: nothing is left uncanceled:

getting about is as much a hazard as
a hap: I’m trying to think of nothing

(the forecast is for four to eight
more inches) but even nothing has a

rim around it, which makes it a
something: still, somewhere within

that something is a “float” of
nothing, a kind of resilient blob

wandering strange: pure nothing: the
nothing right next to the rim might

be something but not farther in toward
the central nothing: if you cut out

a specimen of that, you would have
a piece of nothing, but then the

“piece” would have to be entirely
mythical or it would be something

again: it’s hard to care about these
arduous ardors when the eggs are

nearly over, and the snowplow is due,
due and late: and branches

crisscross the street, bringing down
lines (O ye, in the future, can you

imagine, our landscapes (along our
streets and across our fields) are

strung with wires, phone, electric,
high-tension, so primitive!)

nature’s disasters trim nature up
shipshape (it is a ship): high wind

which we had last week cut dead wood
out of the trees, though it’s so

early in the season, the lilacs still
hold their leaves—so much worsening

the burdens—and today’s snow brings
down whole diseased or overextended

limbs, so the trees get skinny and
light, their catchments shrunk like

sculptural wire: ocean-bottom
storms of lava make pretty islands:

cracking faults make room for oceans:
continent drifts into continent and

crinkles up razor-young peaks:
nervous mornings produce so much

speech: pacing helps, too: I am not
patient: actually, twigginess has

not been helpful for some of the
trees: really twiggy trees catch

heaps (and heaps) of snow and bend
way down till their branches crack

off or they pitch head first: on
the way to the campus a while ago,

I came upon a log across the road &
on the way back, a tree fell across

the road right in front of me, and
later on Highland a bushy branch hit

me right in the windshield: I said
to myself, if I don’t get on home!

everything now is in a still, white
suffering, an unloaded tension, I

mean, a tension in which the load
has not been un: and the tension

makes me tense: I don’t like to be
cooped up: I don’t have any Snowbound

resources: my typewriter’s my only
outlet into this cramped-up strip:

I don’t get any easing away before a
margin cracks me stilted or forces me

back in on myself: when I use up
this tape, I’m not buying another:

this is a dot upon which what
has happened has happened