Disintegration Loops
All afternoon
Leaves spoke together.
You speak the vital
Of a syllable.
: :
Among things, other things:
Grass, clouds, sun.
God. Ourselves.
: :
Divide this from that.
It is not a metaphor:
You feel shapeless.
: :
It is difficult. Is dark.
Yet what is the page?
Blank.
Empty night lies down,
Empty.
Look.
What you expect.
: :
The frequency is more or less:
An ether without dream,
Shadowless, composed
Of salt.
Waiting.
Known to none:
A music. Harmony’s final rest.
Note on the poem: “Disintegration Loops” borrows its title from the William Basinski’s 2002 album, The Disintegration Loops. The poem is an erasure of the following four poems by Wallace Stevens: “The Search for Sound Free from Motion,” “A Look Across a Field,” “A Poem Written in the Morning,” and “Study of Images II.”
Eric Pankey’s Lunar Calendar: New and Selected Prose Poems 1984-2026 is forthcoming this May from Codhill Press.
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