Leviathan

By George Oppen 1908–1984 George Oppen

Truth also is the pursuit of it:

Like happiness, and it will not stand.

Even the verse begins to eat away

In the acid. Pursuit, pursuit;

A wind moves a little,

Moving in a circle, very cold.

How shall we say?

In ordinary discourse—

We must talk now. I am no longer sure of the words,

The clockwork of the world. What is inexplicable

Is the ‘preponderance of objects.’ The sky lights

Daily with that predominance

And we have become the present.

We must talk now. Fear

Is fear. But we abandon one another.

Source: New Collected Poems (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2008)