→ my first keyboard ←
esc
In
life
,
the
number
of
beginnings
is
exactly
equal
to
the
number
of
endings
:
no
one
has
yet
to
begin
it
.
In
poetry
,
the
number
of
beginnings
so
far
exceeds
the
number
of
endings
that
we
cannot
even
conceive
of
it
.
Not
every
poem
is
finished
—
one
poem
is
abandoned
,
another
catches
fire
and
is
carried
away
by
the
wind
,
which
may
be
an
ending
,
but
it
is
the
ending
of
a
poem
without
an
end
.
Paul
Valéry
,
the
French
poet
and
thinker
,
once
said
that
no
poem
is
ever
ended
,
that
every
poem
is
merely
abandoned
.
This
saying
is
also
attributed
to
Stéphane
Mallarmé
,
for
where
quotations
begin
is
in
a
cloud
.
Paul
Valéry
also
described
his
perception
of
first
lines
so
vividly
,
and
to
my
mind
so
accurately
,
that
I
have
never
forgotten
it
:
the
opening
line
of
a
poem
,
he
said
,
is
like
finding
a
fruit
on
the
ground
,
a
piece
of
fallen
fruit
you
have
never
seen
before
,
and
the
poet
'
s
task
is
to
create
the
tree
from
which
such
a
fruit
would
fall
.
In
the
beginning
was
the
Word
.
Western
civilization
rests
upon
those
words
.
And
yet
there
is
a
lively
group
of
thinkers
who
believe
that
in
the
beginning
was
the
Act
.
that
nothing
can
precede
action
—
no
breath
before
act
,
no
thought
before
act
,
no
pervasive
love
before
some
kind
of
act
.
I
believe
the
poem
is
an
act
of
the
mind
.
I
think
it
is
easier
to
talk
about
the
end
of
a
poem
than
it
is
to
talk
about
its
beginning
.
Because
the
poem
ends
on
the
page
,
but
it
begins
off
the
page
,
it
begins
in
the
mind
.
The
mind
acts
,
the
mind
wills
a
poem
,
often
against
our
own
will
;
somehow
this
happens
,
somehow
a
poem
gets
written
in
the
middle
of
a
chaotic
holiday
party
that
has
just
run
out
of
ice
,
and
it
'
s
your
house
.
An
act
of
the
mind
.
To
move
,
to
make
happen
,
to
make
manifest
.
Be
an
act
of
Congress
.
A
state
of
real
existence
rather
than
possibility
.
And
poets
love
possibility
!
They
love
to
wonder
and
explore
.
Hard
lot
!
But
the
poem
,
no
matter
how
full
of
possibility
,
has
to
exist
!
To
conduct
oneself
,
to
behave
.
How
a
poem
acts
marks
its
individual
character
.
A
poem
by
Glandolyn
Blue
does
not
sound
like
a
poem
by
Timothy
Sure
.
To
pretend
,
feign
,
impersonate
.
That
,
too
,
yes
and
always
,
because
self
-
consciousness
is
its
own
pretension
,
and
has
been
from
its
beginning
;
the
human
mind
is
capable
of
a
great
elastic
theatre
.
As
the
poet
Ralph
Angel
puts
it
,
“The
poem
is
an
interpretation
of
weird
theatrical
shit
.
The
weird
theatrical
shit
is
what
goes
on
around
us
every
day
of
our
lives
;
an
animal
of
only
instinct
,
Johnny
Ferret
,
has
in
his
actions
drama
,
but
no
theater
;
theater
requires
that
you
draw
a
circle
around
the
action
and
observe
it
from
outside
the
circle
;
in
other
words
,
self
-
consciousness
is
theatre
.
Everyone
knows
that
if
you
query
poets
about
how
their
poems
begin
,
the
answer
is
always
the
same
:
a
phrase
,
a
line
,
a
scrap
of
language
,
a
rhythm
,
an
image
,
something
seen
,
heard
,
witnessed
,
or
imagined
.
And
the
lesson
is
always
the
same
,
and
young
poets
recognize
this
to
be
one
of
the
most
important
lessons
they
can
learn
:
if
you
have
any
idea
for
a
poem
,
an
exact
grid
of
intent
,
you
are
on
the
wrong
path
,
a
dead
-
end
alley
,
at
the
top
of
a
cliff
you
haven
'
t
even
climbed
.
This
is
a
lesson
that
can
only
be
learned
by
trial
and
error
.
I
believe
many
fine
poems
begin
with
ideas
,
but
if
you
tell
too
many
faces
this
,
or
tell
it
too
loudly
,
they
will
get
the
wrong
idea
.
Now
here
is
something
(
really
interesting
to
me
)
,
something
you
can
use
at
a
standing
-
uponly
party
when
everyone
is
tired
of
hearing
there
are
one
million
.
three
-
thousand
-
two
-
hundred
-
ninety
-
five
words
used
by
the
Esimo
for
snow
.
This
is
what
Ezra
Pound
learned
from
Ernest
Fenollosa
:
Some
languages
are
so
constructed
—
English
among
them
—
that
we
each
only
really
speak
one
sentence
in
our
lifetime
.
That
sentence
begins
with
your
first
words
,
toddling
around
the
kitchen
,
and
ends
with
your
last
words
right
before
you
step
into
the
limousine
,
or
in
a
nursing
home
,
the
night
-
duty
attendant
vaguely
on
hand
.
Or
,
if
you
are
blessed
,
they
are
heard
by
someone
who
knows
you
and
loves
you
and
will
be
sorry
to
hear
the
sentence
end
.
When
I
told
Mr
.
Angel
about
the
lifelong
sentence
,
he
said
:
"
That
'
s
a
lot
of
semicolons
!
"
he
is
absolutely
right
;
the
sentence
would
be
unwieldy
and
awkward
and
resemble
the
novel
of
a
savant
,
but
the
next
time
you
use
a
semicolon
;
which
,
by
the
way
,
is
the
least
-
used
mark
of
punctuation
in
all
of
poetry
)
you
should
stop
and
be
thankful
that
there
exists
this
little
thing
.
invented
by
a
human
being—an
Italian
as
a
matter
of
fact
—
that
allows
us
to
go
on
and
keep
on
connecting
speech
that
for
all
apparent
purposes
is
unrelated
.
You
might
say
a
poem
is
a
semicolon
,
a
living
semicolon
,
what
connects
the
first
line
to
the
last
,
the
act
of
keeping
together
that
whose
nature
is
to
fly
apart
.
Between
the
first
and
last
lines
there
exists
—
a
poem
—
and
if
it
were
not
for
the
poem
that
intervenes
,
the
first
and
last
lines
of
a
poem
would
not
speak
to
each
other
.
Would
not
speak
to
each
other
.
Because
the
lines
of
a
poem
are
speaking
to
each
other
,
not
you
to
them
or
they
to
you
.
I
will
tell
you
what
I
miss
:
I
miss
watching
a
movie
and
at
the
end
,
huge
scrolled
words
come
on
the
screen
and
say
:
The
End
.
I
miss
finishing
a
novel
and
there
on
the
last
page
,
at
a
discrete
distance
from
the
last
words
of
the
last
sentence
.
are
the
dark
letters
spelling
The
End
.
It
was
its
own
thrill
.
I
did
'
t
ignore
them
,
I
read
them
,
even
if
only
silently
,
with
a
deep
sense
of
feeling
:
both
the
feeling
of
being
replete
,
a
feeling
of
satisfaction
,
and
the
feeling
of
loss
,
the
sadness
of
having
finished
the
book
.
I
have
never
,
in
my
life
,
read
a
poem
that
ended
with
the
words
The
End
.
Why
is
that
,
I
wonder
.
I
think
perhaps
the
brevity
of
poems
compared
to
novels
makes
one
feel
that
there
has
been
no
great
sustention
of
energy
,
no
marathon
worthy
of
pulling
tape
across
the
finish
line
.
And
then
I
found
a
poem
of
mine
that
I
had
carefully
written
by
hand
in
the
sixth
grade
,
and
at
the
bottom
of
the
page
,
in
India
ink
,
beautifully
apart
from
the
rest
of
the
text
,
were
the
words
The
End
.
And
I
realized
children
very
often
denote
the
end
because
it
is
indeed
a
great
achievement
for
them
to
have
written
anything
,
and
they
are
completely
unaware
of
the
number
of
stories
and
poems
that
have
already
been
written
;
they
know
some
,
of
course
,
but
have
not
yet
found
out
the
extent
to
which
they
are
not
the
only
persons
residing
on
the
planet
.
And
so
they
sign
their
poems
and
stories
like
kings
.
Which
is
a
wonderful
thing
.
Roland
Barthes
suggests
there
are
three
ways
to
finish
any
piece
of
writing
:
the
ending
will
have
the
last
word
or
the
ending
will
be
silent
or
the
ending
will
execute
a
pirouette
,
do
something
unexpectedly
incongruent
.
Gaston
Bachelard
says
the
single
most
succinct
and
astonishing
thing
:
We
begin
in
admiration
and
we
end
by
organizing
our
disappointment
.
The
moment
of
admiration
is
the
experience
of
something
unfiltered
,
vital
and
fresh
—
it
could
also
be
horror
—
and
the
moment
of
organization
is
both
the
onset
of
disappointment
and
its
dignification
;
the
least
we
can
do
is
dignify
our
knowingness
,
the
loss
of
some
vitality
through
familiarization
,
by
admiring
not
the
thing
itself
but
how
we
can
organize
it
.
think
about
it
.
I
am
afraid
there
is
no
way
around
this
.
It
is
the
one
try
inevitable
thing
.
And
if
you
believe
that
,
then
you
are
conceding
that
in
the
beginning
was
the
act
,
not
the
word
.
The
painter
Cy
Twombly
quotes
John
Crowe
Ransom
,
on
a
scrap
of
paper
:
“
The
image
cannot
be
disposed
of
a
primordial
freshness
which
ideas
can
never
claim
.
Easy
and
appropriate
thing
for
a
painter
to
say
.
Cy
Twombly
uses
text
in
some
of
his
drawings
and
paintings
,
usually
poetry
,
usually
Dante
.
Many
men
and
women
have
written
long
essays
and
lectures
on
the
ideas
they
see
expressed
in
Twomblys
work
.
Bachelards
sentence
simply
says
this
:
origins
(
beginnings
)
have
consequences
(
endings
)
.
The
poem
is
the
consequence
of
its
origins
.
Give
me
the
fruit
and
I
will
take
from
it
a
see
and
plant
it
and
watch
grow
the
tree
from
which
it
fell
.
Barbara
Henstein
Smith
,
in
her
book
Poetic
Closure
:
A
Study
of
How
Poems
End
,
says
this
:
"
Perhaps
all
we
can
say
,
and
even
this
may
be
too
much
.
is
that
varying
degrees
or
states
of
tension
seem
to
be
involved
in
all
our
experiences
,
and
that
the
most
gratifying
ones
are
those
in
which
whatever
tensions
are
created
are
also
released
.
Or
,
to
use
another
familiar
set
of
terms
,
an
experience
is
gratifying
to
the
extent
that
those
expectations
that
are
aroused
are
also
fulfilled
.
"
But
there
is
no
book
I
know
of
on
the
subject
of
how
poems
begin
.
How
can
the
origin
be
traced
when
there
is
no
form
or
shape
that
precedes
it
to
trace
?
It
is
exactly
like
tracing
the
moment
of
the
big
bang
—
we
can
go
back
to
a
nanosecond
before
the
beginning
,
before
the
universe
burst
into
being
,
but
we
can
’
t
go
back
to
the
precise
beginning
because
that
would
precede
knowledge
,
and
we
can
’
t
"
know
"
anything
before
"
knowing
"
itself
was
born
.
I
have
flipped
through
books
.
reading
hundreds
of
opening
and
closing
lines
,
across
ages
,
across
cultures
,
across
aesthetic
schools
,
and
I
have
discovered
that
,
first
lines
are
remarkably
similar
,
even
repeated
,
and
that
last
lines
are
remarkably
similar
,
even
repeated
.
Of
course
in
all
cases
they
remain
remarkably
distinct
,
because
the
words
belong
to
completely
different
poems
.
And
i
began
to
realize
,
reading
these
first
and
last
lines
that
there
are
not
only
the
first
and
last
lines
of
the
lifelong
sentence
we
each
speak
but
also
the
first
and
last
lines
of
the
long
piece
of
language
delivered
to
use
by
others
,
by
those
we
listen
to
.
And
in
the
best
of
all
possible
lives
,
that
beginning
and
that
end
are
the
same
:
in
poem
after
poem
I
encountered
words
that
mark
the
first
something
made
out
of
language
that
we
hear
as
children
repeated
night
after
night
like
a
refrain
:
I
love
you
.
I
am
here
with
you
.
Dont
be
afraid
.
Go
to
sleep
now
.
And
I
encountered
words
that
mark
the
last
something
made
out
of
language
that
we
hope
to
hear
on
earth
:
I
love
you
.
I
am
here
with
you
.
Don
'
t
be
afraid
.
Go
to
sleep
now
.
But
it
is
growing
damp
and
I
must
go
in
.
Memory
'
s
fog
is
rising
.
Among
Emily
Dickinson
'
s
last
words
(
in
a
letter
)
.
A
woman
whom
everyone
thought
of
as
shut
-
in
,
homebound
,
cloistered
,
spoke
as
if
she
had
been
out
,
exploring
the
earth
,
her
whole
life
,
and
it
was
finally
time
to
go
in
.
⌘
⌥
_
pageup