On Your Head

When you think of all the risks in a day
For each of you, all of the risks per head,
It’s strange, an awe, you don’t all die at once.

All these days, all the ways you’ve scraped past death,
And here you are, and sure, a few of you
Won’t be here come dawn, but just look at you

All who’ve dodged the floods, fires, and slides, who’ve lived
Through the risks of ill-health, wild beasts, mere falls,
Not to say the risks you are each to each.

Think back, think hard just for a sec, on all
The ways in which you might not have reached this
Day, such as it is, some sun on your head.

You Don’t Need to Grieve for This

And what if truth is of no use?
What if lack of use is truth’s truth?

This law of this, that rule of that,
Our tricks that tell you what comes next,

Or may come, that yield odds in sums,
The best rites you’ve come up with yet—

All these may not be much like truth—
Just true as in good tools, in stone

Or steel points, an axe that strikes true,
A nail banged true, but not true as

In the sense, The Way the World Is.
Truth can’t nail The Way the World Is.

You just try to make tools that work
Well with the ways things are, like nails,

Like words, faiths, maths, laws, rules, and tricks.
But if it’s all like this or that,

If a lack of cause is truth’s truth,
Tools can’t have at the truth of it,

No more than an axe has the truth
It hacks at. Or who knows—has it?

Oh that’s just great, this haft’s come loose.
What if the truth’s no good for use?

There Has Been No Rain This Year

Not quite true but close.
Let’s state this once more—
The cliffs and the gaps

Near here hold the bones,
Clay, and logs that say
This dry’s not the first,

And it will get worse.
For now, the wind spins
Green things, but they’ll brown.

They’ll burn hot or slow,
As so won’t the towns.
Just the bones will hold.