See the wide-eyed one
inside his mother's
cooling belly;
cut him a way
from under
the water, from out
of the corpse.
Now,
orphaned, torn
from the dumb
the humbled body,
the genius springs
(and falls).
All of this knowing
goes
in wanton arrogance
from womb to tomb
from school
to museum from museum
to library from library
to mausoleum.
No building
can contain him. No
words can explain
him.
Books
like people
prove nothing, lie,
disguise the frailty of language
under the booming presumptions
we pretend to be truth.
What might he do
with such a plague:
it is
as if
they are
proud of their stupidity.
Or
perhaps just
loneliness is seeping
through woolen skin--
such thin protection--
passed muscle into bone
marrow and mind:
I think
that this must be
the worst part of being
human
under the weight
of this colossal genius.
"This journal is not a mere literary diversion. The further I progress, reducing to order what my past life suggests, and the more I persist in the rigor of composition--of the chapters, of the sentences, of the book itself--the more do I feel myself hardening in my will to utilize, for virtuous ends, my former hardships. I feel their power." --Jean Genet
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