Lines Always Wash
Lines always wash across the page.
Waiting as lines wash over the edge
Of the page, I can begin to write
Myself out of this problem, this
Impasse, this being stuck. Being stuck
Here on the edge of the split from.
Lines always wash, I can begin.
Only in the midst, in this dark mixt
Of the curve, the curve of my mind
on to my mind irresistible
return, but by such small degrees,
such diverse ramifications
Raushenberg so that one remains
Long unconscious of it toward
a former phrase of oneself for-
Ever dissipated. I had
Fled reality's ingenuous state,
But, perhaps,
The universe of mind, too,
Has its curve,
Of which,
If it exists,
We can know nothing.
Do I speak the words or do they speak me?
But the shape of lips
and an apple and a flower
pinned to a dress
were all I was permitted to
know and to take away."
-Czeslaw Milosz
petals