Only according to first causes
Before the pillar went up, incomplete,
have we been most envied, not blameless,
heralded, even, by the furtive victory
of the new moon?
Or is victory an empty category.
Or is victory just a commonplace,
a reminder which may, at times,
refer to our real lives?
At times we are led to ask
against ourselves if this is all accidental.
A day passes where you don’t distinguish
between what is eventual
and what is eventually possible.
In this way, the pillar reveals
the sweep of its dyadic penance:
on one end, its foundation is standing still,
but the other, if it can be
called an end, is only annually
without its shadow, capable of marking nothing.
How would you tell if your life,
or what you’ve imprisoned inside it,
had inconspicuously changed?
Could you deploy the long agreed upon
custom of numbering the days?
And would it be preferable to victory.
The preposition ‘before,’ in the sense
of the peace it surmounts by this gesture,
delivers its most devastating critique:
we were not most envied, we were
in fact blameless,
and we even lived as others certainly would’ve.
The new moon.
Otherwise this peace is capable
of granting even the shallowest of puddles
an impenetrable, resolute glow.
The day arrives
and the pillar’s foundation is again unthreatened.
Now it is only the heart that’s keeping watch,
albeit with the assurance of birdsong
and conversations with friends,
water music, expressing yourself in your clothing.
Before this, we must’ve dressed
only according to first causes,
only in anticipation of the masterful victory
over common sense,
the other end of the pillar yet complete
in our mind’s eyes, dressed in coats
on top of coats in layers,
each according to the first day
it saw the storm disperse, apparently enshrined
in those brutal, delicate, moments forever.
Nominally they are all ready to be shed,
and only nominally can one be spoken of
as donned ‘before’ another,
‘before’ happiness arrives.
But these are merely technicalities.
It’s enough for me to speak,
to watch the changing of the guards
of my own life,
to hold in my hands those long imprisoned colors
without name, without number, and weep
because I will have had no impulse to apologize.
Whether that’s because we are essentially blameless,
or because those colors are already
disappearing into their newfound freedom,
doesn’t this come down to a technicality.
Doesn’t the metaphor hold anyway.