Innocence (a proposition)*

for Robert Creeley

“… but blinds as it blinds
itself through
what it illuminates.”
-- Jean Francois Lyotard

Some times I know
What it is
To be exposed

What I am to be
This dark singing
Under a lamp.

It is not
To do anything
Not what

We would want
To do, as in
Any impulse

But by necessity
To feel everything
Outside inside

The “dark singing
under a lamp"—
as are such burdens.

I know it is to be
Born out by that
Total regard

Of what it is to be
Seeing also
In a light’s edges.

Song,
Of necessity turning
Cast us back

So to think
The lines
Themselves.

*composed Winter-Spring '05