Selections from "Symphony No. 12"
(formation of the labyrinth)
18
“We are without light”
aimless faces
misplaced
on the page
as in some isolationist’s vision
of no one
imbued with identity
donning the unconscious
mask of primordial awareness
here no path is discernible
among the January waste
no sonority of presence
in the absent cloud cover
mottling the sky
with invisible eyes
“we have followed
the nameless”
fog encroaching
covering the siege
where the wreckage ensued
cutting a striated incision
which bled
and formed
this terrestrial scar
“and it was as if
we lived
through it again”
a life rooted in obscurity and debris
where death remained
an airy profundity
a philosophic progeny
a formulaic abstraction
of time ebbing
through voids
in autumnal faces
sated with age
and fated to pass
into another’s
skewed view
of perception
and reality
“ we are without
light”
Ric Carfagna was born and educated in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, most recently Integral Series published by Alien Buddha Press. His poetry has evolved from the early radical experiments of his first two books, Confluential Trajectories and Porchcat Nadir, to the unsettling existential mosaics of his multi-book project Notes On NonExistence. Ric lives in rural Central Massachusetts with his wife, cellist Mary Carfagna and daughters, Emilia and Aria.
