Some things are made; some things are written.

As to the names of things,
let us be clear about
their sense and reference.

As to the names of people,
let us be open about
our motives and deference.

When we look at the stars, we expect the firmament to persist.
When we see a glass fall, we expect it to shatter.
To perceive is to expect.

Even here, lovers will waste each other's time,
explaining how things work, how the world works.

Everything works, and the world will be fine,
but they will walk earnestly ("as in the day")
dressed like adults, without needs or desires,
and hold forth, like teachers, about machines
and policies and practices and "what they want"
in the upper echelons and why "all we can do"
is one thing (that won't work) or another (that will)
and someone will "just have to understand".

Lovers, I remind you, this is Scandinavia. Relax.
The war is far from here and a hundred years away.

Science shapes our expectations of the world.

Politics fits our entitlement to our history.

You will never be free of this love,
she said. It will never leave you.
It will give you, always, more than you
deserve, take more than you can afford.
It will forever mock your suffering
and censure your simplest pleasure.

You did not find this love, she said,
and it was never yours to lose.
Though you have done much for this world,
our love is not among your accomplishments.
It came before us and abides beside us.
It made us and waits here only to unmake us.

The use of philosophy lies in the precision it brings to the sciences.

It also just makes us think better.

The use of poetry lies in the precision it brings to our politics.

For what it's worth, it also makes us feel better.

It is the function of science to extricate the world from our history.

It is the function of politics to implicate us in it.

Philosophy extricates the concept from our emotions.

Poetry implicates us all.

How can you know things you feel so strongly about?

How can you master people who think so well of you?

This isn't the one sentence everyone should read.

Power depends on deference to authority.*

Knowledge depends on a fixed** point of reference.

_____
*Authority, from author, from L. auctor, "one who causes to grow."
**from L. fixus, "fixed, fast, immovable; established, settled."

From the courthouse roof,
a crow drops a stone of flint.
The churchbell rings.

Let him work.

I spent all this time thinking about it.

I will at some point learn to take everything seriously

at the same time
for a few hours at least.

Imagine the metaphysicians reaching a consensus.

(There must be thousands of them!)

"The mind is the place of vague things." (Valéry)

In the world, they are absolutely precise.

Writers know exactly what they're doing.

People are entitled to live in the world they understand. They do well, however, to obey their history.

What is there?

The ocean exists.

It also inspires.

The ocean asserts itself and admonishes us.

We stand on the shore and look to the horizon.
It is what it is. We must become ourselves.

The ocean has its reasons, and its passions.