vol. 15, no. 3 - vol. 16, no. 1 || from-axes

From-AxesAuthor(s): Theodore EnslinSource: boundary 2, Vol. 15/16, Vol. 15, no. 3 - Vol. 16, no. 1 (Spring - Autumn, 1988), pp.111-115Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/303253 .

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from-axes

Theodore Enslin

A start. What can it mean? We do not. A stop. Presence. The taking. Breath. We do. Do not.

The real illusion-that we do anything. The inexact equation. Nothing equals where or from. An embarrassment to consider where we came from.

Ivan Tolstoy "It is hard to look back on one's innocence." 5/4/82 There was a time when we could count

on foundation. What is here today, was, and will be. Age. Eternity. The words meant something, and could be

used without cringing or embarrassment. Ah, what is running in the tide, or falling/rising of the ledges-spume. And heartache in the spume- the mark of silence. It is all my way out-no, a fiction. All of it is illusion.

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But there is grit in this- not mere aura-evanescent smoke- The start. The means.

"It was a time of innocence, of limits. One saw the world as that county in which one lived. A sphere of influence included not much more than a garden and orchard contiguous to what another had as his." But greed and avarice were there, extended the bounds.

Brock/Smith Put back, night after night, land quarrel a few feet north or south contended.

It was not innocence.

The dead now catch themselves in frenzy, Ernst Schelling: know nothing of the dance, or why. A Victory Ball They expend no energy. It comes upon them.

Merely that much. Things move down the page, almost without

my bidding. Always a start and a stop implied, where none may be. It is the nature of this second-hardly yet recorded. As if the ink would not run, nor the hand hold to the writing. It remains in the blood, no matter how I attempt to remove it- or to heat fluids from a spark that will not touch. Deflects. An even rhythm held over a long time. The attempt, but I do not find it, nor yet despair. In this motion of the wind, I am hardly yet alive. I bend to it. Is it still a great thing to set all of it down?

W. B. Yeats What can come of that empty grave? Ah William, what we say in haste. We do not regret it as often as turn into the wind on another tack. Leave a little room for the sail, and tiller, a freeboard into the sea. I've spent the morning, almost without

knowing it, covering up the tracks. No one comes to follow, but I'm sure enough

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of where I was, to forget it all. A point of recall, instant if it will serve, or recollection where a balance counts, and detail blurs into a natural landscape- one I never saw before.

(That emptiness still bothers, gnaws and troubles sleep.) (Pull the plug, and let it go, all, below the scuppers. Desolation on the seas. A sure return?

Ha! to the land that underlies the waters. In the grave-the grave of logic and remembrance. Plant it all around with thyme and rosemary.) It's a full audience we've asked. It's a full series, ahead and behind. A man writes quickly at certain points- forgets the clogged ink. That was another time, dear heart- the country by another name. The bones long mouldered, and the graves unmarked. Roads there impassible. Wolves howl the winter long. in doubt,

I sing the whole night through.

The hardest chance of all is one I do not know-. Hangs in air-not smoke- hangs a presence--something not seen. There, if you want to pick up on it. Start. Stop. The flick of a switch. The current is not always there. There is something perverse in all of it. But I persevere. Long ago I despaired of setting all of it down. We do what we have to do. And go out in darkness. Where, oh lords, will there be space for both the head and the feet? Dispirited and alone-the conditions are those beginning and ending. It was a fact. It is. No fiction. A pailful of water against the window-. I take all this seriously- a serious laugh with blood on the lips. Things are late this year. They do/do not stop or break-the sluggish blood as dark as ink that thickens.

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The years keep well inside themselves, and yet the places where what was known decay or crack in storms. The very stones lie open- record of this passing. A surface does appear. A portion of such time as will be will not-

start stop. Near - and nearly to break the style. Form and meaning do not enter. At least it has not occurred to me to write within such framework, or to place such bounds: It was, is, always and never- bonds and strictures. The dungeon of the mind intent or neatness and straight line. I can avoid it, If I waver where the others call for courage- and adherence.

It is the slow season- one of half hearing and appearance. Sometimes we break out of it, but gather nothing beyond the dross of the moment-the impelling. It is at this point the entrance vanishes. Magic is to entrance, and take away in dreams, all that lies upon the shore, hint of what is to shipping another horizon. Composed in the heat of the day, the mist rises. Presume it no notion more than a resolve complaining of it rigid placing.

No! Stop/start. Resemblance places the thing behind. A shadow or shadowing. It is the portion of a doing that pulls me outward, and against the passionate avowal- only in smaller places to avoid it- the hesitancies become the real. Beauty cloys, as such. It comes off center- or it does not come at all.

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I make such things clear only to myself, and then I don't heed that clarity, turning to the clutter given mandate of a world too much in gear.

"All dreaming times of year." I said that once, and tried to stay within it. But there are dreams I do not control, in full light, and heat of the day. They stand and jeer at one outside who cannot flow with them. Other streams, other times. blind, and blinded by the tears. Uphill-trailing off-.

Grateful for it, I turned my face to the rain to come alive- that all should come from it- the pause within to start once more.

Stop it! Stop the living at an opening

issue-. And the long transposing. What I attempt is only in the attempt. Nothing else counts so much. Depends, and there, the ripe fruit

falling- grain in ear and sheaf. The little I have said -must say- that this goes on, reverberates-.

April 21, June 7, 1982

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vol. 15, no. 3 - vol. 16, no. 1 || from-axes

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