A Conversation with Martin Heidegger
7
You were a god almost, who could have howled
the breath you modulated as silent gas.
Some here, too, labor to please any glinting
tooth, but less original than you, leap
through paltry hoops of innocence and wit--
never blushing. I blush down to my scars,
those old concealments, under an old hat,
out of fashion and as frayed as a hairnet.
We all flee private fires. You in your dark
peasant bloodroots. Stocky, dark hair and eyes,
long rooted here. Whoever hides with you
under your peasant garb, it's not the risen dead.
Here, firelight and night licking, you are less
real than your later glosses of your early work,
where endlessly washing your hands you theorize
unspeakables the young man you strain to know
could not have guessed, without seeing what you
saw and don't even try to find words for.
It howls, Martin. Who plays your priest? you--
once a novice--washing yourself with Hölderlin's
lie to Mother, that his is the most harmless
of pursuits, most innocent, while homesick paths
lead to alpine ledges where dreams of the valley
misted far below mesh with fratricidal nightmares.
Nothing washes, Martin. Every atom holds a galaxy,
all galaxies echoing them, and we region in all
individuals. Hunger to purify a redemptive
plot of earth severs and scatters its remnants.
Van K. Brock
A Conversation 8 | Ein Gespräch7
Contents | Mudlark No.
4