Of Words in This
by W. Scott Howard
Working here, the imminent
danger is precisely that
we might unravel ourselves
into language, falling for
radiance—visible trace
of an immanence above
our highest windows—something
glimpsed, startling if ever
near translation. Such a world
loved and limned bespeaks boundless
inscapes—dehiscence phrasing
wild impossibility.
Autumnal day inside-out
down & down, over, ever
all into all. So be it.
Too many gone. Fierce trouble
then, hereafter even worse.
Why say unsay, escaping
praise—where to rage, how to weep?
Such songs none can bear. Unknown
in the midst, perhaps reckless
stubbornness misdirecting
the course, a curse or message
behind walls, other voices.
Everything into something
else—nothing again undone
thereby. An “Appell of Golde
representynge this semblance,
the worlde”—revolving sphere, fire-
dwelling stillness. Where’s meaning
in this restlessness for truth-
is-where-truth-where-is? Elsewhere
or afterwards, we embrace
desire’s rough unvessel’d forms—
precarious, tender, mere
fictions. What will they ask, or
will they want explanations,
ineluctable bequests?
Descending in a darkness
questions coil, tighten, grow slack.
For some, a hollow line holds
against unbound wanting ground.
W. Scott Howard teaches in the Department of English and in the Emergent Digital Practices Program at the University of Denver. He is the founding editor of Reconfigurations: A Journal for Poetics & Poetry / Literature & Culture. His essays on poetics have appeared in many journals and books, including Denver Quarterly, Double Room, and Talisman; Printed Voices (Toronto), Reading the Middle Generation Anew (Iowa), and Studying Cultural Landscapes (Arnold & Oxford). His poetry may be found in Burnside Reader, Diagram, Eccolinguistics, Ekleksographia, E·ratio #16, Many Mountains Moving, and word for / word.
