OCTONAIRES ON THE WORLD'S VANITY AND INCONSTANCY

Ice glitters like it’s good. The whole world glitters, sped toward ends, we all fall in.

Under the ice is water. But under the world, between you and the everything of your vanishing…

Fire, air, water, and earth still turning, spilling into each other. He tuned the world tense, made the elements restless

so any happiness we might contrive of fire, or air, or water, or earth cannot rest, has to reach higher than earth, water, air, or fire.

It’s all echo—whatever world keeps calling to you in the woods, in a rick, a deep wave— Just a lie that vanishes

as soon as it tricks you inside. Shut up, go away, say to the world. And it does—into the woods, a rock, deep waves that keep calling you.

When the sky’s dark face catches your eye again, let memory write of a darkness beyond this:

days self-blinded, nights of searching untaught, thinking your own thought, light.

Wanting what you fear, fearing your own desire: icicles at the heart form to burn apart.

When, in this cycle of suffering he signs, does the martyr being to suspect himself?