Each evening from my bed I calculated & compared the state of my soul with the state of Kansas, because a place also carries a name. Did my body make an objection to traveling across Texas internal conditions in which I abstracted myself Chicago I never had to force myself to immigrate to the inside thought // like a possum // playing dead // leaving as little as possible living at a surface // which might be burned // a lamp, a desk ... entered the eye ... to prove something ... was going on ... outside the skin Baltimore Deployed over the gutted city: an immense crude sky, scene of some crime or other, a brusk separation parented by nature knowing nothing or understanding nothing requires some concentration except the things the heart can do directly Between the dark & the bed approaching each place or thing my eyes (a body) must accustom themselves anew ...... If a being could be the product of a ground one tastes, then I was Texas developing a vague science of joy or beauty Forgetting the particulars that make it go a paysage abandons a window to get an inkling of the sky or the sky's second elbow | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FRAGMENTS INTENDED FOR DEATH'S JEST-BOOK: A BEAUTIFUL NIGHT by THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES TERMINUS (1) by RALPH WALDO EMERSON DORIS; A PASTORAL by ARTHUR JOSEPH MUNBY FAST ANCHOR'D ETERNAL O LOVE! by WALT WHITMAN A PRAYER by EDNA MAY APPLEGATE |