Do not admire
the poet's pain
nor the doubts
of a philosopher.
They're both trying
to be precise.

As a poet, his feelings embarrassed him;
he sought his dignity in the intensity
of the emotion that is implicit in the act
that each of us is guilty of forever.

As a philosopher, he was loth to think. The clarity of the concept itself was to be the source of his authority. He would simply describe the facts that obtain everywhere, indifferent to our suffering.

Poetry and philosophy, both, address the image. One seeks the emotion there; the other seeks the concept. But poets, of course, are never pure, ever prone to philosophical digressions. And philosophers, thankfully, are easily diverted by poetic notions. The imagination gives them what they need. The image is all they have and, in their private suffering, all that they want.

Poetry braces us with words
against political violence.

Philosophy speaks lightly
into the darkness of science.

After two and a half millennia of Western metaphysics, you'd think we'd have learned to live with a little dualism.

Ignorance is to knowledge
as impotence, to power.

Freedom is to feeling
as limits, to thought.

To know your thoughts
but ignore your feelings

is like mastering your feelings
only to be enslaved by thought.

Rain is not precise. It falls willy-nilly
here-and-there. It doesn't care whose
birthday it is, nor know when to let up.

It's not as if I know not seems,
but the surfaces the mind presents
as things to do break the heart
with all the people still to see.

Try only to understand your cowardice. Let your courage remain a mystery.

Reference is to sense
as deference to motive.

Some words are indications,
others, supplications.

There are things we understand
and people we obey.

I occasionally sacrifice pangrammatical precision to ordinary usage.

Style composes aspects with manners, appearances with surfaces.

A local style collates the aspects of things lying around in a vicinity with the manners of a people going about their business there. It coordinates the surfaces that are manifest with the appearances that are maintained.

A personal style does its own thing as someone or other sees fit.

What is it about a fact that allows us to write it down?
By this aspect, it is known.
And what is it about an act that lets us put it in writing?
In this manner,* we master it.

____
*I had previously written "By this conceit" because I needed a "grasp" (ceit = cept) to go with the "look" (spect). I wasn't happy with it because "concept" belongs with knowledge, not power. Then "manner" occured to me and I looked it up: "manus" (hand).

Sometimes I lack the courage
to tell the truth.
Sometimes I don't have the heart.

Trying is to becoming
as seeming, to being:

between the doing
and the act,
the seeing
and the fact.

Privacy is an institution; secrecy is an organization.

The beautiful woman goes outside
and is desired.

The intelligent woman opens her mouth
and is believed.

The talented woman gets to work
and suffers.

The scientist implicates the object in our knowledge.

The politician implicates the subject in our power.

The philosopher extricates the concept from the thinking.

The poet extricates the emotion
from the feeling.

Decency is to power
as honesty to knowledge.

The truth is cruel.
Justice is a lie.