Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Rachel Blau DuPlessis




Holding the mirror of nature
      up to one’s own death
            is vulgar,
stage-y.
      But not, you know,
            all that inaccurate.
                                     
But who
            could plausibly imagine yourself
                        such drastically different “you”?
Or even "nothing"--in a material loop
            nonetheless out of conscious thought.
                        Hard to achieve.
For what could
      that pronoun  “you” or “I”  or "group"
                                    thereupon mean? 

If you were to speak
      about "it," or of “I”—what is the
            referenced entity?  How to imagine it
consistently?  
      And "them"--how it rives!
                        How it splinters!

So in the event--hold that mirror!--
      Hold it! (does that mean: just stop?)
            or hold it (hoist it up so we can see?).
Which one?
      Which of these contraries
            do you mean?

And further, all this narcissism
      may impede
            the invisible poems
the unsightly poems
      that have no pronouns
            or are mixed, without a
normal person-laden prism
      though they limp along our lives
            parallel to us.





© Rachel Blau DuPlessis




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