Well for one thing I’m much bigger now
Bigger even than the I so large in life
That I must use to speak to the living

Everything in everything I used to say
The pomposity of that formulation obvious now
Though it comes as close as the mind can grasp

But the mind can grasp so little
The tongue discourse so little
And what organ is it
That registers that sense sublime

Of something deeply interfused
The one life within us and abroad
The spirit of delight
The blind inarticulate will

Nevertheless I assert it now
That what one apprehends
While hanging off the edge of a skyscraper

Or in the most intense erotic oblivion
Or in the deepest musical tone
Or in the true experience of the suffering of another
Or indeed in the distortion of consciousness

Constitutes a hint
Toward the rending of the veil
The apprehension as we say of what cannot be known

If it were possible for consciousness to cohere
In the aftermath
Then I might write this very poem