The Whole Is One Piece of Its Parts

If a cube is how all things
Tend to fall, how can we make

Use of this? Tile time back, no
Gaps, like the floor of a bath.

Chop up the world like a root
To put in a pot for stock.

Next, look for the text that’s locked
In the book of change. What shapes

Show up in snakes’ nests of signs?
The mean count cuts a slim swath

Through all the picked paths, which means
The whole is, of course, the god,

Each bit a piece of its face.
Yes, Blake, each grain of sand casts

Its own spell, and all the small,
Like spray from waves, hold the whole,

And is each a wave, a face,
A whole, a self. But the whole?

We can say the shards break well,
So that they all seem to work

To hymn the shape of the source,
The first force that made them, but

Breaks in plates that hew by eye
Can’t say how we had the source

That broke as it had to break,
The face of whole from the whole

That was the shape of the break,
Face that broke in the first place.