To Make a Start: from Paterson
And just as time begins to pass the rigor
sets in, leaving nothing but stiffened beauty,
a pair of boots, a dog, and a yearning quest
of continuous loss over continual gain. Particulars
ease forward reticently. The hope of the general--
the only genuine hope--continues its rolling.
Furthermore (or perhaps however), these ends are rolling
on progressively as always, falsifying the rigor
of the first and calcifying hope and pain into general
anesthetic. Means shift meaning faithfully toward beauty.
The edges shift, shake, and oscillate the particulars
within, blurring the simple itinerate quest.
Is this the everyday, constant quest
of movement between crowded streets, rolling
forth? Are these them? These the particulars
we wanted when we dragged this dead dog in rigor
up, swabbed the blood from its ears, releasing beauty,
ghostly, from a concrete mutt? Arrived has our general.
It's hard to explain the exquisite truth in general,
but more so when you're an undead retriever mix back from a quest
that included drowning in the grey expansive beauty
of the Atlantic City ocean where the horizon sets to rolling
and lapping at your feet. This grey is a grey of a rigor
so severe that all who see it see only its particulars.
The dog is it. The one with all the particulars.
Her moves are to become our moves, her sounds our general
approach to all and all that will be. Rigor
is her only requirement. We shall leave, naked, on a quest
for it all, but only if all of it begins with rolling
freely out in its own direction and beauty.
The only thing that counts as far as beauty
is concerned is this: divide up the particulars
into categorical desires, then smash them with a rolling
pin. A fine dust will be generated and a general
feeling of peace will wash over you and your quest
will end. Breathe deeply this dust, for it is your rigor.
There is only rolling in this nothing beauty.
There is only rigor in these murky particulars.
There is no general thought in this categorical quest.
