For Samuel Beckett

 

Well, I've made it, here I am.
That's to say, here it all is
And perhaps I am as well
As a point of impingement for it all.
At the moment I expect I am
Though it's not always I expect that.
I'll take your word for it, you're impartial,
You don't care much, at all.
So there's a sense in which I'm here.
Can I be here in a sense when there's no sense
In my being here? I don't know,
I know nothing, but somewhere here I am
Related somehow to all of it,
All these things, visions,
Carpet of green pretending to be leaves
Like weetabix, the pile scuffed off
In fluffy wormcasts, other playthings,
Seats and so on, the race of Adam's
Autobiography covering floor, chairs,
Shelves in towers, the tottering bookmen
Breathing open/shut, open/shut,
Like bellows, and their life's in that.
Some dust, not enough to cough on.
I'd like to know what's in the dust.
The flies don't bring it. I suppose
It's somebody's, everything's somebody's,
I'd take it back, only I don't.
I don't want it, but I leave it where it is.
I've no grudge against it either.
I suppose it's older than me,
Older than all of it, some of it must be.
It was here first. Here, there,
What's that to a piece of dust, it was somewhere,
Or rather it was, that's what's important,
Or was important, to the dust,
Or what the dust was, once.
We're not unalike, I understand this now,
Whereas before I didn't
When I understood a lot of things.
The trick is to see things from the dust's point of view,
It doesn't bother much what it settles on, doesn't
Discriminate or incriminate, it just, just what,
Just nothing, that's the trick of it.
How can I say I don't choose, don't discriminate,
Dust could as well have been planets, nail-parings,
The trick's just the same, the trick's a trick
Just the same. Just nothing.
Capture is something I wouldn't object to
If I were objective. Submission's no ignominy,
A biological imperative, christ taught it
And so do sticklebacks. Simply I might
Bare my jugular like one cowed wolf
Of a battling pair to stop the scrap,
The attrition? But what are christ and wolves?
A memory inflates the sounds into a semblance,
Of what a semblance, other sounds,
Other memories - no don't answer that,
I'd only listen, only believe
In the yarn you spin down to me to hook up remorse.
Ah, you see, I know it, the grin's no cartoon!
But I still listen, to even the unspeaking,
Listen to the hum of possibilities,
The clattering of an undialed exchange.
Ingrowing cortex is what's diagnosed.
You feel the answer, how can you feel
An answer, I don't know, it's only words,
No, before that it's something else,
Not even that, a protoword. But you
Know what I mean, don't you, do you,
And what do I care, I don't know,
You answer that one too.