print previewback EDWARD MAYES
On Lines from Czesław Miłosz’s “Meaning”
Make no sense following each other
—That day you read about the “nothing
That is not there” and about “the nothing
That is,” did you not want to let fly
The perfectly notched arrow, but not
With the thought of proving something unprovable?—We were all born in November, you said, once
Novem, the ninth month, mouths open, coming out of
Mutilation into elation, weaving among the land
Mines, the larded goose crisping in the oven,
But what doesn’t mask the scent of new birth?—Who would you prefer to show yourself to
First after your resurrection, your eyes blazing
In the noose of new light, if you could only escape
From the multitudes, taking your dinner at
The multiplication table, who wouldn’t not want to disappear?
The last line of Wallace Stevens’s “The Snow Man”: “Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.”