Tuesday, August 19, 2014

And You Can Rip Off the Whole Facial Mask











[AFTER EXPERIENCE TAUGHT ME]

W.D. Snodgrass

After experience taught me that all the ordinary   
Surroundings of social life are futile and vain;

         I’m going to show you something very   
         Ugly: someday, it might save your life.

Seeing that none of the things I feared contain   
In themselves anything either good or bad

         What if you get caught without a knife;   
         Nothing—even a loop of piano wire;

Excepting only in the effect they had   
Upon my mind, I resolved to inquire

         Take the first two fingers of this hand;
         Fork them out—kind of a “V for Victory”—

Whether there might be something whose discovery   
Would grant me supreme, unending happiness.

         And jam them into the eyes of your enemy.   
         You have to do this hard. Very hard. Then press

No virtue can be thought to have priority   
Over this endeavor to preserve one’s being.

         Both fingers down around the cheekbone   
         And setting your foot high into the chest

No man can desire to act rightly, to be blessed,   
To live rightly, without simultaneously

         You must call up every strength you own   
         And you can rip off the whole facial mask.

Wishing to be, to act, to live. He must ask   
First, in other words, to actually exist.


                           And you, whiner, who wastes your time
                              Dawdling over the remorseless earth,   
                           What evil, what unspeakable crime
                              Have you made your life worth?



3 comments:

  1. one of my life's persistent questions - what will it take to rip the mask off, to break the trance?

    http://www.blckdgrd.com/2014/07/eight-for-fourth.html?showComment=1404498415434#c1948557542929502841

    but probably a better strategy is to take all the telescopes, and turn them inside out, and point them away from the big sky

    http://tinyurl.com/q736a2k

    ReplyDelete