CLOUDS
The head is filled with
mechanisms, the mouth
is ranting and raving, and
the whole surrounding
atmosphere is being polluted
by this factory of arguments
and opinions.
Osho Zen Tarot
Very like a whale
Hamlet. Act iii, Sc.2
Sweeping in from
somewhere across the ocean
bringing death
bringing rain
a propensity to
lapse into mode
of contemplation
skimming the smokestacks, crossing
picket-lines, picket-fences,
fingering their way over the ridges
(so starkly beautiful
the slopes
of this
mountain)
sky seething boiling dreaming
how the Earth balances
finds its way to
every required solution
****
You cannot
count clouds
they are not sheep
clearing a style
discrete theoretical objects
carcasses at the abattoir
shipped for your satisfaction
will
give aura of heavenly
of meld
with the ash-smoke from
tall labour camp smokestacks
(image of horror
that I missed
providentially)
stuff to coddle shrouded minds
with aversions to clarity
little faith in transparency
keep us
sorcerer’s apprenticing
behind our
first chemistry sets
(not quite imagining
what lies beyond our horizon
they soon
keen
on obfuscating)
****
And they knew cloud
they did
not entirely
in antithesis
to their element
Plato knew
it
Socrates too
and we dare not, will not,
speak here
of Euripides and Aristophanes
with sacred cave cloud and
cardboard caricature
nursery school cloud
digital
matrix cloud containing
every
mathematical principle
but step back
with me here
my
dear, would-be
Tarot magicians
learning at last the Machiavellian styles
that commune
with distraction, flow
from sleight of hand
all
a razzle-dazzle, hail
to the sun god
trick
of perspective
a light-diffusing, blue
jigsaw of atoms
and there the wisps
and whispers and
forbidding Thor-towers
the point where
it all
seems
so elemental
power twisting to a point
where
it all seems to curdle
a
vague sense
of sorry truth, of
necessary abstraction
thrown into
stark, sharp dialogue
between
our dark
and our light