Thursday, January 4, 2024

BEN LERNER ~

 




No Art


Tonight I can't remember why

everything is permitted or,

what amounts to the same thing,

forbidden. No art is total, even


theirs, even though it raises

towers or kills from the air,

there's too much piety in despair

as if the silver leaves behind


the glass were politics

and the wind they move in

and the chance of scattered

storms. Those are still


my ways of making and

I know that I can call on you

until you're real enough

to turn from. Maybe I have fallen


behind, am falling, but

I think of myself as having

people, a small people

in a failed state, and love


more avant-garde than shame

or the easy distances.

All my people are with me now

the way the light is.


_____________________

Ben Lerner

The Lights

Farrar Straus Giroux 2023