A Conversation with Martin Heidegger
14
Burnished red trees around us sing in silence.
Fires from this quiet deathstorm swirl the map.
I've lived where hysteria rules and bids me speak
and be silent or be accused of hysteria.
Yet nothing disturbs those who can't see the dust
on the goldenrod and bloodflowers, or see naked
petals muted under a subtle film. I don't imagine
the deaf or lame, miraculously, will sing or dance.
And if what I diagram seems ordinary, more searing
forms than ours scan those blueprints. Already,
firestorms increment into organisms nothing impedes.
We are still at peace with our old psychoses. How
will the battered veer? Who will help them or us?
Martin, I know you are there, silent as always.
Hannah said you had no concept of community,
no talent for politics, and went off
into Eckhardt in old age--
Where else?--always absorbed
with original revelation, no matter how removed,
and your bloodroots.
Alone in your peasant's hut
and Black Forest Mountain skiboots, in summer
your pale fire almost sufficed.
Innocence makes our conversation harmless, impotent,
until we learn to serve, open, wait on--
as you finally tried to, Martin--the multifoliate
unknown echoing beyond our words.
Fumes from many fires eerily flare our pale flames,
consuming me, also, Martin. Conversing with whom?
Van K. Brock
Ein Gespräch 14
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