Selections from "Symphony No. 12"
(formation of the labyrinth)
29
I
A day of knots
entangled
in this molecular design
a labyrinth unnamed
agitated hemispheres
and days absorbed
by hours
slowly transforming
this space
into another landscape
II
Now a small ocean
motionless
as one sees
in dreams
the curve
of the horizon
symbolically returning
to outline
the shape of windows
the shape of the sky
and of the mirror
withdrawing
before eyes are open
and flesh returns
to dust
III
And sometimes
an oracular ghost
passes this window
forging a link
with what is known
in Newtonian physics
as an inaccessible past
with the equally intractable
quanta of ontological prescience
IV
These are the equations
which are sought to unlock
the epistemology of rooms
where sunlight cycles through
the numerical significance
of days passing
through the hourglass aperture
and landscapes
where steep grades descend
incense spirals in columns
dissipating within
an archeology
of former lives
lived in transit
between opposing forces
reduced to decay
and an elemental breath
which spontaneously evolved
V
To have comprehended this
in states of waking
and unconscious sleep
perturbations
from a passing wake
of a ship unseen
oceanic tides
which split the atom
eschatologies forged
from painted deities
ontological debris
buried in cellular mutations
or the image
of a simple line
dividing
night from day
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.
