What is your aim in philosophy? –
To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
I
A man makes his own destiny.
He makes a decision.
A man makes nothing,
it is already there, everything he needs.
It is a picture of a room
with two chairs, a bed, a table.
On the table are flowers,
white and red.
The curtains are drawn.
A man walks into the room, and already
he is at home.
He waits
for the knock at the door.
“Come in,” he says, “come in.”
But no-one knocks.
The door is shut.
He is alone.
He waits.
II
It takes two
to make a silence
-two heads, two conversations
and all speech
crushed under the hammer
of “No... No... Nothing
No.”
You never give me your money [Lennon/McCartney]
You only give me your funny paper
And in the middle...
In
the net
of our complicity, riddles
our only currency, our mouths
opening and closing over
the same silence, the truth
like broken glass
on the tips of our tongues
- Don’t
Say
it!
I know
I know
We
know
A man who cannot speak [Elias Canetti]
can dissemble...
can only dissemble
The fluidity of transformation
is denied him... he cannot know
where it would take him
if he surrendered to it
The truth is I am afraid
and fear has taught me never to submit
to desire’s incalculable fortunes.
III
In the walls of my prison
are many doors
all counterfeit
I try them
one by one
“Turn around!” the philosopher
says.
“Behind you is a real door
and freedom.”
He thinks I am blind
or mad,
that only ignorance
imprisons
-
Fool!
The walls, too
are counterfeit.
IV
We were talking about communism and poverty
of the spirit, and I thought
“When the only freedom you have
is the freedom to dream, you dream
of freedom – nothing less.
To desire anything less
impossible
would beggar desire
- a tyrant, or nothing at all.”
But the only world I know
is a world of signs – every street
is a forest, every face an omen.
I read and read
and learn nothing.
And all I want to know
what I want to know is [e e cummings]
how do you like your blueeyed boy...
V
The worst illusions are those no truth
can get a grip on
- sheer hopes and smooth-sided fears.
In the perfect landscape of an imaginary life
no joy takes root, but every least regret
is permanent
and eats like cancer.
Oh, I’ll show you something
good [Lennox/Stewart]
It is a picture of a room,
a face
pressed flat to the glass
of a lens
that
you cannot see.
This is destiny.
What a man wants.
Not what he needs.
A man wants
something
else
then
he wants it again
and again
and again
until it drives him...
until he is no longer...
until he is
completely...
