Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 199

The Man Facing Death

River, why do I think of you?
What, in your long history, am I?
That that was loosed from the deep split of stone?
That that runs carelessly over pulp earth between ribs of high granite?
That that will give itself too quickly, in time, to the stream?
And where were you in those moments of gathering, of
Self pulled to Other, of
Broad to Collective, of
A Push in the Back at the Lip of the Falls?
Where was I?
When was I?

Why do I think of you?
Whose hope was this, that water move onward?
That it move downward, in weight, in gravity, from stone?
That it roll as one over miles of sand and sunken limbs
to break around the bone of an ankle dipped, giggling, in?
That it slow, slow, spread wide at its end,
reach thick over steady undertows and then lift,
as the sole of a foot in stride,
up from the opposed tides to meet breeze, gulls, cross-current air?
Why, if the sea is ever a bringing in?
I ask again: Why is the sea ever a bringing in?
I hear this rhythm endlessly.

And this, too, River:
At times, did you also feel it was the shore moving past us?
I remember dreaming once, of towns flowing endlessly through our vision,
the strange, solid-land feel of a surface sliding on, on, and out...

What, in your long history, am I?
This wave, or
the next?
This wave, or
the next?
This wave, or
the next?
Do you still know?
And will I yet be living?

KMC 02-08-07