"Rigor of beauty is the quest. But how will you find beauty

when it is locked in the mind past all remonstrance?"

​

To make a start,

out of particulars

and make them general, rolling

up the sum, by defective means―

Sniffing the trees, 

just another dog

among a lot of dogs. What

else is there? And to do?

The rest have run out―

after the rabbits.

Only the lame stands―on

three legs. Scratch front and back.

Deceive and eat. Dig

a musty bone

​

For the beginning is assuredly 

the end―since we know nothing, pure

and simple, beyond

our own complexities.

​

Yet there is

no return:  rolling up out of chaos,

a nine months' wonder, the city

the man, an identity―it can't be

otherwise―an

interpenetration, both ways. Rolling

up! observe, reverse; 

the drink the sober; the illustrious

the gross; one. In ignorance

a certain knowledge and knowledge

undispersed, its own undoing.

​

(The multiple seed,

packed tight with detail, soured,

is lost in the flux and the mind

distracted, floats off in the same

scum)

​

Rolling up, rolling up heavy with

numbers.

​

It is the ignorant sun

rising in the slot of

hollow suns risen, so that never in this

world will a man live well in his body

save dying―and not know himself

dying; yet that is

the design. Renews himself

thereby, in addition and subtraction,

walking up and down.

​

and the craft,

subverted by thought, rolling up, let

him beware lest he turn no more than

the writing of stale poems . . .

Minds like beds always made up,

(more stony than a shore)

unwilling or unable.

​

Rolling in, top up,

under, thrust and recoil, a great clatter:

lifted as air, boated, multicolored, a 

wash of seas ―

from mathematics to particulars―

​

divided as the dew,

floating mists, to be rained down and

regathered into a river that flows

and encircles:

​

shells and animalcules

generally and so to man,

​

to Paterson.