Rogue Elephant

The poem

The reason to be autonomous is to stand there, a cleared instrument, ready to act, to search

the moral realm and actual conditions for what needs to be done and to do it: fine, the

best, if it works out, but if, like a gun, it comes in handy to the wrong choice, why then

you see the danger in the effective: better then an autonomy that stands and looks about,

negotiating nothing, the supreme indifferences: is anything to be gained where as much is lost:

and if for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction has the loss been researched

equally with the gain: you can see how the milling actions of millions could come to a

buzzard-like glide as from a coincidental, warm bottom of water stuck between chilled

peaks: it is not so easy to say, OK, go on out and act: who, doing what, to what or

whom: just a minute: should the bunker be bombed (if it stores gas): should all the

rattlers die just because they rattle: if I hear the young gentleman vomiter roaring down

the hall in the men's room, should I go and inquire of him, reducing him to my care: no

wonder the great sayers (who say nothing) sit about in inaccessible states of mind: no

wonder still wisdom and catatonia appear to exchange places occasionally: but if anything

were easy, our easy choices soon would carry away our ignorance with the world-better

let the mixed-up mix and let the surface shine with all the possibilities, each in itself.