Because it was inevitable, it was inevitably
Absurd. We played our favorite memories without
Remembering any of them. Night was gems.
The exiles themselves told of their escapes
In language they had translated from God.
God refused to be drawn that way. Kenneth
Koch, a hundred years ago, well, maybe
Only fifty or sixty, rambled on in le Parisien
About what he called “The Pleasures of Peace,”
Making them seem as pleasureless and unpeaceful
As he could. His excuse was that he didn’t know
From war and thus must leave the poetry
Of its horrors to others. (One suspects he had
In mind ball-turret gunners.) Well, we don’t know
From noise because we compose cacophonies
In silence. Yes, literally. We imagine a clanging
Of phrases without doing louder than breathing.
But we need not repeat Koch’s enterprise.
We need not go on about what we aren’t
For hundreds of lines. We have our own
Tarantella. We have this dance. Because we are
Inevitable, having been at all, we are inevitably.
We will bet you, dear, in the headlights of this,
You will remember this experience without
Remembering one single, chilling phrase of this.
There is nothing, which is something, even
If there’s never, beyond it, any permanent bliss.
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