Apr 30, 2020
World, World—
Failure, worse failure, nothing seen From prominence, Too much seen in the ditch.
Those who will not look Tho they feel on their skins Are not pierced;
One cannot count them Tho they are present.
It is entirely wild, wildest Where there is traffic And populace.
‘Thought leaps on us’ because we are here. That is the fact of the matter. Soul-searchings, these prescriptions,
Are a medical faddism, an attempt to escape, To lose oneself in the self.
The self is no mystery, the mystery is That there is something for us to stand on.
We want to be here.
The act of be being, the act of being More than oneself.
— George Oppen, from This in Which (1965)
