print previewback EDWARD MAYES
On Lines from Czesław Miłosz’s “Meaning”
And on this earth there is nothing except this earth
—When did I wonder who may have
Won, the want-to-bes or the might-
Have-beens, and where did someone
Say they parked their butt, when did
They say that hope was a bling with leather?—Noumenon, I thought, but it was phenomenon
I felt, whithersoever, or some phantom
Singing in the hot mic, blah blah blah, the way
The Polish say it, all the echoes in the stadium,
All the roars in the bull ring, yes, there is nothing.—“Nothing is / But what is not,” five fights,
Six deaths, the closing credits, the curtain call, when
I pronounced auger like ogre, that was bitching,
On the verge of being epiphanic, but then not,
Back to not, always veering toward not, more not.
“Nothing is / But what is not” from William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3”