Poem: the mean glide through the peril

***

THE MEAN GLIDE THROUGH THE PERIL

How the mean glide through the peril

Disrupts convergences and prevents release.

How the tremor and calm dissolve

Into absent unity, unified in their absence,

From an existence not found nor present

But for lack of absence or

The fleeting communion caught in

The spectacle of stiff and pleading

Harmonies straddling an abyss which

Swallows nothing.

Too much coming in from the going out

Of myself, where it all comes from

As the going yet flows

At a mad pace back to where it

Never started but only came from

After going out and back

Through and onward without

Loss or gain except

In the imagination that what

Goes is lost, what

Comes is gained,

And the difference between

Alternatives belongs to

Neither.

In that dimension where exaltation is my habit to

Cloak and rule obedience from

The generous pain, and

The wind without air and

The space without presence

Contains freedom chosen to be

Caught, and madness chosen to be

Sane.

Of the last and distant tampering

That might replace or impair

What came before without finishing

And is finished without ending

Because everything is finished

And always neverending but in its

Absolute meandering, where

Turns and bends follow and

Close one another off

But the water moves without

Ending but for finishing the

Curves each stopping along

The bank of curves that

Never stops.

***

These selected fragments are excerpted from unpublished writings by Jack Haas; selections from the notebooks 1990-2005.