The Best You Can Make Of It

I noticed that people were kind of incredibly
Relaxed, lately, they seemed to be internally
Rising above every absurdity.

And I wondered
If maybe this was because they were
Transcendentally informed, the sheer
Enormous hilarity of the universe at large
Had maybe peaked in them.

People in great
Numbers were sharing this mood, not a
Really jubilant mood, but a tolerant mood,
Under the big swaying traffic lights, below
The swirling fans, in check-out lines, pulling
Into lonely gas stations, rubbing their eyes
Before the computer screen, rolling out of
Bed I guess with a sense that these days we're
Driving onward with the pure gift of a
Sense of what has never been known before.

Sure the man in line at the bank wears the
Whole aspect of a clown.

For awhile he's a
Little silent about his former self, hardly
Able to stand there really, but the fact that
The teller, beyond a wall of plate glass, looks
To him like still a sadder case yet, or some
Crook in absolute attire, well this all keeps
Him just enough involved, like he's in a film.

We're being filmed no doubt, at least in the
Serial consciousness held by everyone around.

When the revelation hits, it's a soft shock,
It's like an old self told him to expect this
Kind of scene to be over, like a transition,
But a new voice tells him no, we must suspect
This is the scene itself, we just don't have the
wisdom right now to correct it.

So patience can collect a paradox, and make
You the inside figure in the whole drama.

These days the mood is a kind of cosmic
Wondering, a watching for dispersion of
The clouds, a day the blue sky makes
the town look ridiculous.

A ball of paper wrinkled up and tossed into a
Wire basket just across the room is a fit remark
That will invoke a certain dreaming of all
ages past, and planets colliding.

I knew, and I told her, my whole youth I kept
The stars in a rough metaphoric course,
Until we accepted them in our own sight.
So many people alive, I said, has torn the
Heavens apart, they're hardly there beyond
The white curtains in the floating bedroom.

More people are alive right now than ever
Lived and died in the total history, more
Things are made, jammed into the senses,
Printed on matchbooks, thrown out on curbs
For the snow to make new icons of, than the
Entire past produced, you see.

A given day
Is driving onward with the matter of what
Has not been known before.

We're so unique
It feels like it's killing us. And our pleasures
Are extreme.

I'm posting this as my thesis,
In the understated language lent me now by the secret of my immortality.

In a graceful kind of pausing elucidation
About things unnamed, with a sense that
The missing creation shall in a summer dusk
Burst right into the real backyard; with
A thousand things to say, I and the rest of
The silent, slightly sad, firmly resolved people
Of time, stand and walk in the great mural,
Become the audience, tentative, lulled by
Strains of music, on the edge of happiness
Complete, with a fortune in the truth ahead,

If we don't step backwards into a swarming
Abyss of such a . . . beautiful confusion!