How exquisite the
thinking behind
this thought, like
ruins not yet ruins.
And of vulnerability,
mine, dense as the
blackness outside my
window, nightsong
darkness no song
throbbing out there
beyond the glass but
some kind of
unidentifiable subtonal
thrum--life thrum, death
thrum, who can
say?--but does knowing
oneself, knowing
others mean seeing
the vulnerability
in others? I speak
only out of
my own vulnerability.
Every individual,
every epoch, shelters
its abject darkness,
its unspeakable
counter-arguments.
Perhaps the “I”
that comes to
know its own
terrible vulnerability also
comes to see, comes
to know, the
vulnerability of
others--but is
unmoved, unchanged
by that recognition.
That’s a farness
you don’t want
to push past. A
god of another
self, unpropitiated
by small sacrifices.