Poetry is a form for life, released harmony from a given life-material or a life-impression that is expressed. Poetry is the in itself clear, unity and immediacy—experience, not intellect, morality, usefulness, not what we call beautiful or ugly. Poetry is the individual—and (note)—all. An unboundedness that is released in the mind.

It is not a thought, finished and complete, that seeks expression in a beautiful form. It is thought's struggle, what is in and below the thoughts; it is the things and all things behind them, the life-material, expressed in our perception, that we should render in aesthetic creation.

—to say something? say what? we know it not, it falls upon us, our thought grows, the leaf grows and our thoughts put forth shoots, new overviews come over us when we think write live experience.

I thought I spoke so simply that the birds held their breath. I said all that I was in one word's sound. It was said, I kill man. That was my intention. [End Page 17]       When I get rich, I want to come with the birds, and say nothing comprehensible.       Then I am a poet.

Difficult I am to explain, the less thou shalt explain away.

Poetry

1.

It is hymn
it is word
without word
it is eyes and the hand
air is and light

2.

One time
but none really
and no one knows   I have a name
   and name have
   just that
   oh that a
   name

3.     That shadows
     wordlessness
     Till that is
     and silence

And happens therein
and eye's look thereupon,
all therearound
and in light's flame [End Page 18]

4.

Where I navigate my own great waters, am I closely come to
         you where you walk
and speak soon a tongue
and known as only what we love.

5.

Cut out, cut
you, your word
cut out your
contour, that you cannot
explain.

Be what you are
be that music
be you, your self
like a word concert
be you, as one hidden in world's muteness
a dreamt concert.

6.

In that world
world and
in you
in your room's world

I
on the street
at a loss
An earth and shall lower
down its face [End Page 19]

7.

A chord a tone a fleeing minute
a stone and fell in space or water's depths
and not returns
a milestone pushed aside
on endlessways' journey
a center in an aiming towards waylessnesses
a center rest, wave's entrance, drop's fusion
with timeless-, roomless-oceanlikenesses
— our word — our life!

8.

That in eyes
scent and coolness
only
and that like
and like you
that — is

9.

I am sausagemakersbrawn and butcher's hand, I am toothless mouths and tapeworm. I am doctor of learned routine and professor of dumbness. I am general of an imagined salvation, I am full of — morals: I am whistlingly vacant like an ocarina. And if I carry a truth, it's not my fault. I am mockerer's mockery and world turned upside down. I am finger to finger, but I don't carry the Hand.

10.

This morning. Peace
and the gull's shriek.
A boat and flower
is land and water.
Flower's boat is day's
air under the horizon. [End Page 20]

11.

I have no bird's name and herb's text
and from myself I speak
hear I that voice
seek I
I find words: and come,
words and more than understand
words and that not other is.

12.

Now glide all boats away
now flaps all for the windless-
wind away
now stills over bay and sea and the gulfs
now dies the summer's sun
and the yachts' white sails
now flutters light
for the last summercheertime
now — just like in the fogs
light of the fogs
light
of grayday's mildness's
the fading's non-faded
in the September evening
light
sounding and heard, and
not really
— listen not, you hear it not
but yet clearest
sounding and heard [End Page 21]

13.

We went not namelessly away
our life was to give name
and word and form,
give eye's light
give stone and the sand
to learn that and we not did learn
and that under world's name and name
go deepest
namelessly away.

14.

As boiling stream of lava you are,
scorched, you scorch,
or petrify. As stone by stone
stands everything at fate's gate.
As stiffened statue is all, what more of altar-service, of dance
         or trade, —
only body's images, grey as cement or ashes. —
What you were, is the tones, your eye caught
and ear bore
as sounds in the face.

15.

Calm it is quiet
it speaks not laughs not
it is quiet
calm, thinks not
longs not anymore
calm it is quiet
the eye has shut itself
the heart doesn't beat. [End Page 22]

16.

A painting closed
like a whole's
glance of everything
only a reflex
an image a shimmer
day and light's
that is
as arrow-like
and upon the wing
so white
an evening's-peace-hour
bodiless hand
a morning merely
that with golden water's
hands.

17.

Words — they light up
words
so close close
simpler
the words
and gently listening
there is
and like bread in the hand
day — and nobody has it —
and in life
going right in. [End Page 23]

18.

Word is word
and thing stands in my room
But word's image
image and word and to word
Oh don't stay
Remain not, remember not:
it is no more it is
after all

19.

We go and search
and we wander
we go and search
it is not in the words
it is not words
words not
but of a naught
oh your day

20.

You go the
words
and where
were you, it was
I know not and
that to your ear
will
and with the eye
merely with finger