dietotzeit

Every day you fashion it, this purpose,
And every day, at the end of the day,
It awaits you, slow death of your desires,
Climbing the stairs to your abandonment.

The bones of the world are all arranged in
Neat little piles of suspected identity . . .
Have in fact always been arranged in some
Aggragate with which to hold back fate.

And still, at the end of the day, it waits
For you with the tired solemnity of God
Though such judgments are our judgments,
Our own indefatigable affects.

There is the room and the lamp and the sameness.
You have made this, though you remain unsure
Of what precisely you've made -- perhaps that's
For another to decide; but isn't that

Precisely the problem, why so much is at stake?
We must always know things without knowing them,
Must believe in the shape of another's bones --
So much so we don't see what we do to our own.