Out of Emptiness

Out of emptiness comes this: Purposes as incomprehensible and wonderful as these purposes

Purposes as incomprehensible and wonderful as these purposes
Either you had no purpose or the purpose is beyond the end
The purpose of sitting is not to be satisfied or satiated

Because the timepiece not only serves a purpose, it is adapted to that purpose
Except it was a secret purpose
The world is a mental activity, a dream of souls, without foundation, purpose, weight or shape

People in collective idleness are even more repellent than when purpose motivates them
God, glass, my townspeople! For what purpose?
His purpose and mine is to catch photons and store them in our bones

Lately, as have you, I have thought about our war and its purpose
To have a season for every purpose, Ecclesiastes was right about that
Names of plants, languages of mammals, purposes of insects, placement of rocks

My friend who is counselor to kings and presidents never lacks purpose
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Not to say there is no purpose necessarily, just I don’t immediately get it

Stately purposes, valor in battle, glorious annals of army and fleet, death for the right cause
Use of violence by the local militia for a limited purpose, protect the young from the janjaweed, the crop from the weed
The knight, the penitent misses last assessment of life’s purpose, babbling for God to appear

I mean your entire purpose should be living, you must take living seriously
Sleep with a purpose
Or lose all purpose beyond murder, child sex and food hoarding

Counting is associated with primitive forms of writing, that is the purpose of poetry
The purpose of school is to introduce us to the world’s innumerable wonders
Their corners sharp, their lines exact, as if their purpose was to show the plane geometry of snow

That’s when everything becomes clear, purpose v. purposelessness matters less
Lonely physics, national purpose
This then is the purpose of purposelessness (and of eating less)!

We will live with the question What was our purpose?
If we are not at home in the world, contributing purpose, we lose our desire to stay here--and we die
The men who left the machine have started their own business, a new endeavor by which they will keep warm and purposeful

You go the way of an unknown soldier, unable to assess the purpose of the battle
Let Greece then know my purpose I retain, nor vex with new treaties my peace in vain
And shake the purpose of my soul no more

Author's Note

--Eliot, T.S., "Little Gidding", Four Quartets, 1942
--Deutsch, David, The Beginning of Infinity, Viking Press, 2011
--Chasar, Mike, "Conches on Christmas", Poetry, The Poetry Foundation, September, 2005.
--Borges, Jorge Luis, "Break of Day", Spanish, trans. Stephen Kessler, Selected Poems, ed. Alexander Coleman, Viking Penguin, 1999.
--Petri, Gyorgy, "Gratitude", Hungarian, trans. Clive Wilmer & George Gomori, Eternal Monday: New and Selected Poems, Bloodaxe Books, 2000.
--Williams, William Carlos, "Tract", The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, New Directions Publishing, 1938.
--Amichai, Yehuda, "A Man in His Life", Hebrew, trans. Chana Bloch, The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, Newly Revised and Expanded Edition, University of California Press, 1996.
--Lowell, Robert, "Mr. Edwards and the Spider", Collected Poems, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007.
--Tennyson, Alfred, Lord , "Vastness".
--Millay, Edna St. Vincent, "Spring", Collected Poems Edna St. Vincent Millay, Harper & Row, 1956.
--Hikmet, Nazim, "On Living", Turkish, trans. Deniz Perin, The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, Ecco Books, 2010.
--Matthews, William, "Homer's Seeing-Eye Dog", Selected Poems and Translations: 1969-1991, Mariner Books, 1992.
--Yeats, William Butler, "Under Ben Bulben", The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, The Macmillan Company, 1956.
--Borges, Jorge Luis, "Everything and Nothing", Spanish, trans. Kenneth Krabbenhoft, Selected Poems, ed. Alexander Coleman, Viking Penguin, 1999.
--Harris, Roy, The Origin of Writing, Open Court Publishing Co., 1986.
--Zukav, Gary, The Seat of the Soul, Free Press, 1990.
--Francis, Robert, "Old Roofs", Robert Francis: Collected Poems, 1936-1976, University of Massachusetts Press, 1985.
--Homer, The Iliad, IX & XIV, Greek, trans. Alexander Pope, Penguin Books, 1996.