June 17 68 # 2 1 2
moon
arithmetic
in the night
rain
This would be a mere ‘journal entry’ were it not for the fact of the way reading this poem puts one in the circumstance being presented—i.e., doing arithmetic “in the night” (inside) wherein at first the moon is shining (outside) and afterwards (in the progress of the poem)—after one has been doing some arithmetic—in time, it rains.
The work of doing arithmetic (by, presumably, a human?) is one space ‘inside’ (and in immediate one-space-relation to) the shifting ‘outside’ conditions nonetheless represented by different/four-letter words. The preoccupied/continuing work (of a human?) is thus literally situated (by the spacing-structure of the poem) within a wider, ongoing event, of which it is a part.
Stepping back a little ways, it’s like seeing ‘him there’, in the house, through the window, from the street (as in a Vermeer)—or from space—maybe even writing a poem (in an essay called “not / forever / serious” in areas / lights / heights, LE calls “language in verse…a math of everyday life”) ? And certainly the moon/phases of the moon, etc., have had something to do with provoking mathematics.
Very ‘condensed’/‘simple’. In the Kansas typescript (see IV, 1708), this poem is centered on the 8 1/2 x 11” page (unusual for LE), using the whole page to frame/focus the image in its ‘window’.
Seeing the words as composed of numbers (of letters) going about their business in/on the grid of the typewriter page.
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