William Carlos Williams, one of the few
Poets to celebrate the burning of a library,
Also suggested composing as fracturing.
What a physician. Those of us more prone
To fracturing unexpectedly feel differently.
He was on to something, though. Whether
Writers strive to orchestrate a unified field
Or a fierce vortex, or an open-ended sprawl,
The universe in which we make our beds
And compose our little rooms proceeds
By infinite fracturing. Hairline cracks appear
And radiate upon examination from every
Seeming solid thing, extending in every one
Of change’s infinite dimensions. The end
Of that continual irruption of discontinuities
Is to lay down the records, fossils, memories
That continually create the past’s novel
Complexities. The flash flood warnings out
Last night were only the latest reminder
That the elaborate stratigraphy of cliffs
In these parts was written, line by line,
By repeated brief convulsions of waste
And destruction. The cosmologists have yet
To know how entropy’s its own worst enemy.
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