Except Insane
by norman fischer
A scrim or barrier
No it’s no trouble
No trouble at all
A haze useful
To cope with the stress
Of building a world where there was none
Of re-arranging a world arranged otherwise
Than a visionary’s dream
How except in insane
Is language one question
That it can be kept apart
From two concepts
In its strangeness, its strength
How except it be divorced
Even by a hair, a breath
From a word, a throat, a
Speaker within her speaking
From or in a beginning
In unwrapping
From the question the questioner
In which things are
Packed for the commerce of those
Who speak and are,
Being is written and spoken
Things come first
They are, are alive
Two concepts are divorced
They ought never have been together
Asunder, nor can language
Some small wind twirls a bush-tip
Some grasses furl, unfurl
Who watches, hears, knows, speaks
Flexes an uncontained strangeness
A strength surpassing understanding
In the first place
Norman Fischer is a Zen Buddhist priest and poet. Former abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, he is founder and spiritual leader of the Everyday Zen Foundation (www.everydayzen.org). He’s been publishing poetry since the 1970s, when he began his association with a Bay Area group of experimental writers. “The Strugglers,” the latest of his many collections, is forthcoming from Singing Horse Press (San Diego). His previous book is the serial poem “Conflict” (2012, Chax Press).