Classic Poem

Let loss show loss, and absence absence, here.

Thus absence shows and shadows absence, loss loss,
Mimetic memory of simulacra
Endowing sand with what stars tell, spelling
Their big and little O's around the North
Which is not there except as present zero.
Here.

It is as empty as the bear is arctic.

Space equals space.
Space does not equal space.

The particles of everlasting light
Fall through their endless cosmos endlessly
And slow, all things considered, ever so slow.

Painstakingly the particles of light
Persist in being particles of light.

And the large pieces of music are composed
Of somewhat smaller pieces, movements, say,
And then they of subaltern passages, phrases,
Clusters, measures, two by two into the ark
That is a covenant with shapely silence,
Down to the final hemidemisemiquaver.

Yet even larger pieces, opera plural of opus ,
Omnia Opera , as they were wont to say in olden yore,
When nobody knew when it was nine o'clock. . . .

The total music of the universe,

And even that but . . . but you know the rest.