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the sum 287
a walk in the void
I could not see the life I live.
Wheeling to catch it as it was,
I found myself the fugitive;
There were my footprints, in reverse.
I could not praise them, could not curse.
Bare of their principle and cause,
They lay caught fast within that realm
No inquiry can justify,
No good or evil overwhelm.
To enter was to be interred
Where the gross lip absorbs the word.
It was what dead men occupy.
Or so it seemed. And yet I live.
Living I left my tracings there.
Driven historian, I arrive
Here where I blindly went, and see.
Dark walker through dubiety! --
Resuming you I grow aware,
Which is my life. O formless ground
Of quick experience, but not
Experience itself, I found
That I had walked upon your void
Saved by the blindness I employed
Till I stood blinking in my thought.
the baby cockatrice
I'd read of the vast reptiles, maybe seen
Some musty drawings of them, years ago.
The rumor that such creatures have once been
Will make a child fear, idly, They are, now.