THIS HERE PLACE GOES

49. THIS HERE PLACE GOES:

I have colored the tabernacle and it is purple I have shaded the curtains and they are red silk and damask and the massive pullstrings woven of gold and hung with precision conceal the ark and the treasures within and I send back messages to the men of the Bible and the Hammurabic scribes etching letters in stone or baking the clay as WE READ without ceasing and translate the damages in the prisons of other minds with Gavin Evans and any of his brothers Bernard Meisel Henry Schneider and - lest we forget the fairer sex among us -Linda Slocum of Dubrovsky Prefect Sullivan Arts at 34 E11th Street (ALL once patients of ours) and through this MY CONSCIOUSNESS IS AN EVERYDAY ORDEAL and that is the one paradox of my life that I cannot solve nor fathom – HOW I GOT THIS WAY – and just as I say that I present myself at the same time outside of the McCauley Mission on White Street and I enter the lobby where four guys are sitting around quite happily and with glee talking to one another and I notice that glee to be a SIMPLE glee - one I’ve never attained - a simple glee of men talking and trading their simple informations between themselves and it’s probably been this way JUST AS IT SAYS since 1827 right here or if not here then nearby and I walk in among the enamel and the polished walls and the entryway desk where the white man sits with paper and pencil and the cook comes out laughing and comments on the simplicitude of everything old and the new and he smiles and walks me out as we talk and trade messages to the traffic passing by in the deep horrid cold of real life - ALL DOORS SHUTTERED ALL BUSINESSES SHUT all time stopped everything without motion and without commotion too and in that stable environment I see men work and stay and prosper but BUT IT IS NOT MINE so I must move on and simply laugh back thinking of Ezekiel which is all I ever think of - the vast man prophet of old standing before the visiting Gods and their crafts roaring and he writhed twisting back to establish something JUST SOMETHING TO RECOGNIZE and all that’s left is a meager description of majesty and power and might and the vast roaring roving spacecraft from stars and places unseen lands him down takes him back enters him away and in that flash of smoke and fire I REALIZE I STILL LIVE and within and among that are no voices to hear no words no language for all is greater than all and everything is more than everything and more than everything ever was for ‘BEFORE ALL LIMITS SO WAS I’ and it was only restless man who set the terms and made the limits and now professes to live amongst what he has made and in that FALL we so exist amidst so many things (OH OH let me list) : the severed garden the broken sky the wearying weathers the toil of work and labor the settings of the sun and moons the turnings of all things the reasonings and the openings and closings of our simple logics and countings the very makings of our place and forms and Earth itself among us for ONCE WE WERE MORE and once we were free but now sundered and broken we exist among our own rubble turning and deciding and separating and breaking forth from terms and conditions without sense or ending and in that morass we try to stay alive and live and prosper by whatever terms we make for the conditions we take and IT IS HARD THIS SIMPLE LABOR of mind and hand and matter and place but no map exists except for the one we’ve made and somehow somehow in the eyes of all men I see that weary toil over and over again.