(re) collections

On Aquiring an Encyclopedia

Here's the huge Brockhaus encyclopedia,

with those many crammed volumes and an atlas,

here is Germanic dedication,

here are neo-Plationists and Gnostics,

the first Adam is here and Adam of Bremen,

the tiger and the tartar,

painstaking typography and the blue of oceans,

here are time's memory and time's labyrinths,

here are error and the truth,

here are the protracted miscellany more learned than any man,

here the sum total of all late hours kept.

Here too are the eyes of no use, hands that lose their way,

pages unreadable,

the dim semishade of blindness, walls that recede.

But also there is a habit new

to that long-standing habit, the house,

a drawing card and a prescence,

the mysterious love of things ---

things unaware of themselves and of us.

(1981)

***

Aqui la vasta enciclopedia de Brockhaus,

aui los muchos y cargados volumenes y el volumen del atlas,

aqui la devocion de Alemania,

aqui lose neoplatonicos y los gnosticos,

aqui el primer Adan y Adan de Bremen,

aqui el tigre y tartaro,

aqui la escrupulosa tipografia y el azul de los mares,

aqui la memoria del tiempo y los laberintos del tiempo,

aqui el error y la verdad,

aqui la dilatda miscelanea que sabe mas que cualquier hombre,

aqui la suma de la larga vigilia.

Aqui tambien les ojos que no sirven, las manos que no aciertan, las ilegibles paginas,

la dudosa penumbra de la ceguera, los muros que se alejan.

Pero tambien aqui una costumbre nueva,

de esta costumbre vieja, la casa,

una gravitacion y una presencia,

el misterioso amor de las cosas

que nos ignoran y se ignoran.

(1981)