Home or Less

There’s a never going home built into the unempty occupied by the first person place. I am thinking here of the conclusion of a poem by Chrystos. It is the final poem found in the volume Not Vanishing and here are its concluding lines: "This is a give away poem / I cannot go home / until you have taken everything & the basket which held it / When my hands are empty / I will be full" and its title is "CEREMONY FOR COMPLETING A POETRY READING".

All the lines that preceded this would-be ending point to the inexhaustibility of the gifts. There is always more. And so the great gift is the lesson that we are constantly living in ceremony and that life can be lived as a perpetual poetry reading. And when one takes that lesson on, one arrives at insight: one might not be able to go home and yet be at home. To the empty hand nothing is alien. No sorrow, no pain, and no joy.

And so for day 507
03.05.2008