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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
