It is a Great Risk To Know Oneself

IT IS A GREAT RISK TO KNOW ONESELF


I often think, mainly, on Wednesdays, about
solder
and flames coming out of a can with a pump.
I think this arrangement of metal is called
“A torch.”
The flame is used to melt the lead.
Esthetes often used these torches to melt lead,
for melted lead
is more beautiful than solid lead,
just as the spiritual is rumored to be
more beautiful than the material.
Perhaps, melted lead is what Ferdinand Saussure
was referring to when he spoke of
“speech circuit,” circuit de parole.
I am not very concerned
with semiological objects,
but am ardently concerned with melted lead.

Melted lead is a sacred, silver temple,
amorphous, and majestic in its variety
of cryptic silver shapes.

Melted lead is the afternoon of a melted sun,
the twilight of Ash Wednesday.

Melted lead is Thomas Aquinas commenting
on the allegorical mode
of Biblical interpretation.

Progress has taken place, and now melted lead
can be bought in tubes.

Tonight, I will squeeze out three drops
of melted lead on a white plate,
tilt the plate, back and forth,
and have a vision of the bird
called the bee-eater singing at noon
in an olive tree just turned
a hundred years old
and its branches split to spread.


Duane Locke

Posted over on The Hold