This poem is taken from PN Review 5, Volume 5 Number 1, October - December 1978.
The Garden of the HesperidesIf I knew what to say, I would say it;
But as I do not, I send it,
This:
When there was time and place, I lost it;
Now there is not, I regret it:
That.
Faithful, ingenious, I mean to say, witty,
She-Jesuit, you are the writing on the wall
Or I am the wall and you are the writing;
Would I understand, if I knew my letters?
Will you teach me? What if I am ignorant?
Beyond teaching, savage? A kind of faithfulness
I read, although there is none, of the understanding,
In which the writing has erased the wall.
Or suppose you are the wall and I am the writing;
On your witty surface the lines are erased.
What did they say? Mene, Tekel, Upharsin,
Three names for doom. There is one word for pleasure.
O, 'I' and 'you' are two conceptions,
...
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