Am I able to say I would like to carry you to that
oblique lake overseas, where we can still imagine
“the early 19th Century twilight,” and from the
trestle see how a self-determining logic in the

form of rationally organized matter—the luster of
metal, a vanishing glimpse of the moon or the sun,
a smile—becomes conscious, self-conscious, through us;
a freedom emptied out into that time we were

rambling to and fro like the rivers, and the dust
blanketed inscriptions on pulp condoned from trees
planted with the depths and heights of the human
heart as such? Yet how can we picture abstractions

that we can not live in alone, but perhaps to
imagine, with this, a criss-cross movement of
subjective expressions, views, and attitudes where
I sacrifice myselfs and my topics alike to a faith

we know is unwarranted, a slant illustration of
what we’ve agreed to call truth; the shimmer
of a bunch of grapes by candlelight, its joys
and sorrows, its strivings, deeds, and fates.

* * *

And when I say “this” I mean this, philosophy,
or pottery, or e-mails and short tweets between us.
And when I say “us” I don’t just mean the two of us,
you and me, but humanity. Of course, the abstract

is always felt through the concrete, as, when our  
arms were touching, I felt what I am unable to say.