What might’ve been lost

James Bowden

Nobody likes to imagine themselves the stone.
                                                -Unknown, re. the Myth of Sisyphus

                        t
                        t
To the stone, at the bottom of
the hill or top, just position: it
makes
            no
                difference.
The stone simply asks to be: no
talk of Software or of Finances
Why
        do you
                disturb?
To get into space, man had
to susp end the Wonder™
that
          first
                Begged–
What we go toward, What
comes this way: is not the
wonder
            of My
                  generation.
Folly, to gaze at the ground
when describing the plains:
sky
        defines
                  them
Folly: expect our youth to
pursue wonder we’ve not
been
        let
            to feel
Harness your blame (this)
Harness your blame (me)
and
        walk
              through
Who asks for, needs all of this?
Why, why o why have we (you)
Wrecked
            so
                Much?
Once people live awhile
in a place they’ve (you’ve)
laid
        to
            Waste
It gets to be rather quite
rather quite easy to Hate a
great
          many
                Things
It gets to be rather quite
rather quite easy to Other a
great
          Many
                things
It gets to be rather rather
easy to be amaurotic: neither
you nor I
            quite
                Human
It gets to be rather rather
easy to be amaurotic: neither
you nor I
            worth
                  Seeing
Your story’s all over us
In the morning we fall
Can’t
        you find
                a clue?
O beautiful, for halcyon skies, now
which we cannot see: no longer all
painted
          Sinatra
                  blue
Someday my pain (this)
Someday my pain (me)
will
      rock
           you
For us, the earth becomes
immediately nostalgic: to
awake
        already
                dead.
Nobody likes to imagine themselves
the stone. I, the stone. I, Sisyphus.
One must
            imagine me
                        the tower.
Swing wide your crane
Swing wide your crane
& run
        me
          through.
let us have more of the Wonder,
I say. let us Pause            if that is
needed for (a foundation) Solid.
Let let us not susp end ourselves
& susp end our lives for what we
(we) know not how to Yearn for.

---

There’s a lot going on here and I’m not sure how I feel about it as a whole. I do feel that it captures some sort of somewhat unique sentiment and tone, so am putting it here for that reason, and less because I love the finished product and want to endorse every bit of it. I don’t know. An interesting exercise.

This was largely inspired by an exhibit I saw in D.C. from Robert Adams called Silent America. It’s also a concrete poem in form of a skyscraper, and draws from Bon Iver’s The Wolves, and 2001: A Space Odyssey and Christopher Palmer’s analysis of the film on the Wikipedia page. With some lines drawn from these sources.