#23

The difference is variegated yellow tulips, practically given away. The sun shirtless spread across the green. The difference is a winding down on one hand, a glass of gin in the other. The preparedness in setting out for the final full stop of the season. A drive for driving's sake. A travel grant. The curve of shoulders in public parks bearing different weight under different leaves. A stuffing the crypts of archives, perhaps, and smashing the mausoleum stairs.

What do we do with the old symbols, with the less-than-symbols of past viridities? Post them as personals, comparative texts beginning in revelation? I am looking for the old truths, one might say, disembodied now and in need of incarnation. I am looking for the measure of his touch in yours, a play of forms long since detached from the proper name, and so your name as good as any.

Or one might insist on difference. Say the old is the old, not the new. I am looking for the orphan beginning. What ingenuity though! what fracturing of history, in the pruning of separate garden paths. For one may want to make one's way back some time in the future, when to be well-trodden does not signify a need for charging anew through bramble. I am looking for love, one might say, whatever that might mean. I am looking for an again that is not identity; I am looking for a splitting, temporally, of the very I that is looking. And so your name, one might say, is just as good as any, but not as good (which is not to say, though, worse) as his.