The Absence of Ghosts

“Every time we misremember something old, we are imagining something new.”

We never fell from the void,

But from the fullness we fall,

Becoming, toward the void

That calls us, drawing us on,

Drawing us into being,

Out of what once was the all.

When we will be, we won’t be.

When we thought we were, we weren’t.

When we are, we’re never here.

Nothing is nothing perfect,

Perfect nothing in the end,

Nothing that let us begin.

Paradox is not a curse

Of being trapped in language

But language’s greatest gift,

Meaning’s distorting lenses

Arranged to close the distance

Between our thoughts and what is.

On the river’s northern bank

Facing the shores of the south, 

Metaphysics established

One of its first palaces,

The tidy correspondence

Between balanced Yin and Yang.

Gods and atoms formed the nodes

That gave the causal networks

Coherence numbers needed,

But meaning itself remained

A scrim, a screen, a platform

On which ghosts performed the plays. 

Quiet falls on all the peaks.

After centuries of roars,

The water tower of Tibet

Empties, and billions of apes

Scatter in a world of floods.

That was last night’s performance.

Poor Boyu, he never knew

Whether he knew what he knew,

Nor what he did not know.

He had to quit performing.

Enough! Enough! He shouted.

Then he went and worshipped doubt.

He grew spooky, that Boyu,

Entangled in painting scenes

Of pears on porcelain tureens

In pairs whose geometry 

Of perfect gravity meant

That the curving surfaces

On which their branches unfurled

Their fruits and leaves, in a way

That was beautiful, although 

Boyu now knew beauty meant

Nothing, contained nothing much.

Mixed with paint rinsed from brushes

And crematory ashes,

Memory makes excellent

Potting soil for histories.

Ah, these fragments we pile up

Continually, without

Any end of mind in mind

But with an expectation

Of a miracle, supra 

Spem spero, to save us all.

The broken robot recites

Conditions to get to sleep—

Presence, absence, zero, one,

Many, imaginary,

Natural, fantastical,

Is, is not, was but is not,

Never was, never will be,

Everything ever could be

Vs. never, finally.

In the palace on the banks

Of the Yin and Yang river,

Boyu and the robot play

Chess with all the conditions

They can think of, until one

Or the other gets to sleep.