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Mark Kaplon Biography

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“Dear Amnesiac, Yes, your pyramids were raised Roughly up at right angles To exert out loud and bright in the jungle And obscure in darkness the jungle around— And how many years is it you're living In fear of the darkness there created? You’ve your back to the door and the four corners You’re standing in a room with walls and a floor But just the same as any other You’ve stood in in pictures or places before. Alien in your place of birth, you pound An outraged fist into your palm, but are Too over-tired and too much adrift, Not at home, grown absent in an absent world. So— your steam engine roared Across space and the four seasons, And from conductors’ hands unloaded Its surplus even to the farthest hamlet. Yes, your transportations have taken you Beyond the known horizon, but not any Nearer to infinity, nor to eternity. That is the moon double-paned in the window-glass But could just as well be another bulb reflected. Afloat, nowhere, a ghost you have become You having from many hands vanished. Your mind will not stop wandering, and all over These carnival streets is too much noise for hearing. You have withdrawn from this; are living in fear. You fear death and the chances of death So far removed you live from dying... And waking up you find the day is there, Existing, all-ready, you can only enter— And looking to the night you see a frontier that's Cold, empty, like it's a world you've never known. You've become stuck in the middle of it, without any Sense of the horizons, and are all the time crying Too furious for the ruin of your world. But every thing in ruin must first be made: A wildfire only burns, transforms The wood, and passes. It is not a collapse. Too anxious you’re striving to build a new day— Every morning only awaits your being born.”