Philosophia Perennis
by Anne Waldman
I turned: quivering yellow stars in blackness
I wept: how speech may save a woman
The picture changes & promises the heroine
That nighttime & meditation are a mirage
To discuss pro & contra here is mute
Do I not love you, day?
A pure output of teleological intentions
& she babbles, developing a picture-theory of language
Do I not play the delicate game of language?
yes, & it is antecedent to the affairs of the world:
The dish, the mop, the stove, the bed, the marriage
& surges forth the world in which I love
I and I and I and I and I and I, infinitely reversible
Yet never secure in the long morning texture
A poor existing woman-being, accept her broken heart
& yet the earth is divinity, the sky is divinity
The nomads walk & walk.