Miraculous results have been achievedNotes from a Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel is just such a marvel, a poem of epic length (nearly two hundred and fifty pages) assembled, like some sublime jigsaw puzzle, from fragmentary pieces, varying in size and signficance among themselves, ranging from tiny slivers, like
through the simplest means:
a bottle, a prism, a lens, a fragment of paper, an apple,
and the august, etiolate skull of a sheep
high on a summer hill.
I am searching for my brother. Have you seen him?to what in other hands would be complete poems:
I must set down, before it is too late, the pink murexSometimes the connection between successive pieces is plain, obvious to the meanest understanding; sometimes it reveals itself only after meditation, or when some later fragment makes the hidden shape manifest. Sometimes it has eluded me entirely. Slowly, as we receive the pieces, the puzzle assembles itself before our inner eyes; a picture of great power, skillful drawn, of almost unlimited depth.
my daughter this morning brought to me, naming
for my benefit each part. I scarcely listened;
not that this shell might be less lovely
than she presumes---but that her touch and voice
the confident gestures of an infant hand,
proved almost more than I could endure.
Have we not lived deep-buried in the pages of
children's books, in a world of high moral fable
and fantastic adventure, in times to make our blood
run cold? Is it not incumbent upon each of us
to keep safe from the holocaust all that matters?
As crystal from fluid precipitates
my thought resolves.
I am Magus. Trust in me.
It has not, of course, merely a single message. No work of such length and any merit does. But the theme to which the poet returns, again and again, is annihilation, man's monstrosity to man:
Seven thousand at Trèves. Brighter
than the midday sun at Hiroshima.