Or to Begin Again Read Online Free Page B

the Real to return if you refuse
to obey these prescriptions,
to take these precautions?
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    Cat enters carrying an ass trophy.
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    END VIDEO CLIP
    Morning cycles across night.
Almost enchanted by the light, almost annulled.
Were this the great bearing, were this merely
intrigue, or the architect’s
confidence in the small shop of curiosities,
were the bride less stymied
in her great dress,
were any of these accountable
to the surge of one thing, one thing, one thing,
addition in space, bridge after bridge, and
the known but not recalled,
its bitter appraisal, singular
as the image of a girl,
long hair down over a shirt,
intent to be seeing, to be present,
she, the girl, long hair, open shirt,
writing something else.
    VIDEO CLIP
    Whim and Truce enter the frame.
They greet each other with a small bow.
Whim jumps up and down, hands overhead, trying to touch
the ceiling. Truce turns to leave, a trail of blood behind him.
Whim slips on the liquid and falls down.
Laughter track.
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    END VIDEO CLIP
    Breathe deeply. Exhale whim. Exhale truce.
Can there be history?
Is it there, behind us in the park, Peter on a horse?
Is it in that cathedral, among the quick flames?
In Akhmatova’s kitchen? In Mandelstam’s death?
Can the Real return as history?
Ruin floods into images of new ruin and disappears.
Again! cries the child, Again!
Once upon a time.

II.
    Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end?
    â€”LEWIS CARROLL, ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

ALICE IN THE WASTELAND
    Alice was beginning to get tired
sitting
with spring rain
on the bank
in forgetful snow. She thought,
It is too dark to see anything.
Then she began to wonder
about the meaning of anything
and the meaning of nothing
and in what ways any and no
were alike.
She said to herself, I cannot see anything
and then , I can see nothing
and thought they amounted to the same thing
and wondered
why two ways of saying the same thing
were needed.
If only, she began, and fell
asleep.

    It is soiled, possibly bloody, the dark.
At night there are cries
of the suddenly dying: a rabbit, a hen.
The fox went out on a chilly night.
He prayed for the moon to give him light.
The tune leaked into the air like ink
into paper. In her dream, Alice
is falling downstairs
into a tub of words.
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    The thing is pushed
forward. It is cold, nonsymbolic.
So, nameless as, say, animals are.
Unless.
These stray unlessnesses
avert attention. They
give solace to it.
But it remains, a nameless thing
cordoned into consciousness
as if
being could withstand it.
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    The nomenclature of the
not living is
an it. It, said the soldier, torturing his captive,
it it it.
So let us have the White Rabbit.
Let us have this hurrying near.
Let us, among the
constancy
of living
and its
images
begin.

    I am broke! says the White Rabbit, hurrying to the
bank.
The White Rabbit, in the red,
has no redress.
Naked as a jaybird, the White Rabbit lamented, soon to be a jailbird.
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    But what is the color of chaos? Alice suddenly asked.
Gray, the White Rabbit replied, looking up at the sky,
like a sock.
But there are always two socks, and only one chaos, Alice said.
Colors and numbers are not of the same kind, answered the Rabbit
somewhat impatiently, almost knowingly.
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    How did you find a gray sock in the sky? Alice continued.
The cloud’s contour, don’t you see?
No, Alice replied. I see only a gray cloud, I do not see a sock.
But then, she added, perhaps I live in a gray sock, perhaps this hole is a
sock into which I have fallen.
The White Rabbit disappeared as Alice was considering this possibility,
so she was left without a rejoinder, in the solitude of conjecture.
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    Alice thinks something about eliminating the desire for revenge.
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    Alice was caught in the radiance of the not yet knowable.
This, she thinks, drifting, must be
the feeling of being young.
She could not say
in the radiance of the