Out Of Emptiness Poem by Robert Ronnow

Out Of Emptiness



Out of emptiness comes this:
Purposes as incomprehensible and wonderful as these
      purposes
Either you had no purpose or the purpose is beyond the
      end

Because the watch not only serves a purpose, it is
      adapted to that purpose
Except it was a secret purpose
The world is a mental activity, a dream of souls, without
      foundation, purpose, weight or shape

People in collective idleness are even more repellent
      than when purpose motivates them
God, glass, my townspeople! For what purpose?
His purpose and mine is to catch photons and store
      them in our bones

Lately I have thought about our war and its purpose
To have a season for every purpose, Ecclesiastes was
      wrong about that
Languages of mammals, purposes of insects, placement
      of rocks

They purpose nothing but their ease and die urgently
      beating east to sunrise and the sea
Having died, as such, I find I do not mind quiet living
      with the purpose of a cell
Stately purposes, valor in battle, glorious annals of army
      and fleet, death for the right cause

My friend who is counselor to kings and presidents
      doesn't worry about purpose
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Not to say there is no purpose necessarily, just I don't
      immediately get it

The purpose of sitting is not to be satisfied or satiated
Use of violence by the local militia for a limited purpose,
      protect the young from the janjaweed, the crop from
      the weed
The knight, the penitent misses last assessment of life's
      purpose, babbling for God to appear

I mean your entire purpose should be living. You must
      take living seriously.
Sleep with a purpose
Lose all purpose beyond murder, child sex and food
      hording

Proof that there's a purpose set before the secret
      working mind
Having purposefully expunged from it every trace of
      emotion
What is relevant for our present purpose is counting is
      associated with primitive forms of writing

Unable to assess the purpose of the battle
Desperate for new fetuses to teach purposeful
      workmanlike killing
He will live with the question What was our purpose?

Organize the unemployed, the welfare mothers and
      alcoholics into a flying chevron of purposeful
      explorers
If we are not at home in the world, contributing purpose,
      we lose our desire to stay here- and we die
Their corners sharp, their lines exact, as if their purpose
      was to show the plane geometry of snow

That's when everything becomes clear. Purpose v.
      purposelessness matters less.
My strong heart I abandoned to its own purpose
Lonely physics, national purpose

This then is the purpose of purposelessness (and of
      eating less) !
A shape less recognizable each week, a purpose more
      obscure
That is the purpose of poetry. Gargoyle twice.

For the distant purposes of Henry Ford
The purpose of school is to introduce us to the world's
      innumerable wonders
The men who left the machine have started their own
      business. A new endeavor by which they will keep
      warm and purposeful.

The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is
      to remain just one person
Let Greece then know my purpose I retain, nor vex with
      new treaties my peace in vain,
And shake the purpose of my soul no more

Tuesday, May 9, 2017
Topic(s) of this poem: death,emptiness,friend,god,people,purpose,secret,soul,war,world
POET'S NOTES ABOUT THE POEM
- Eliot, T.S., 'Little Gidding', Four Quartets,1942
- Deutsch, David, The Beginning of Infinity, Viking Press,2011
- Chasar, Mike, 'Conches on Christmas', Poetry, The Poetry Foundation, September,2005.
- Borges, Jorge Luis, 'Break of Day', Spanish, trans. Stephen Kessler, Selected Poems, ed. Alexander Coleman, Viking Penguin,1999.
- Petri, Gyorgy, 'Gratitude', Hungarian, trans. Clive Wilmer & George Gomori, Eternal Monday: New and Selected Poems, Bloodaxe Books,2000.
- Williams, William Carlos, 'Tract', The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, New Directions Publishing,1938.
- Amichai, Yehuda, 'A Man in His Life', Hebrew, trans. Chana Bloch, The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, Newly Revised and Expanded Edition, University of California Press,1996.
- Lowell, Robert, 'Mr. Edwards and the Spider', Collected Poems, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux,2007.
- Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 'Vastness'.
- Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 'Spring', Collected Poems Edna St. Vincent Millay, Harper & Row,1956.
- Hikmet, Nazim, 'On Living', Turkish, trans. Deniz Perin, The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, Ecco Books,2010.
- Matthews, William, 'Homer's Seeing-Eye Dog', Selected Poems and Translations: 1969-1991, Mariner Books,1992.
- Yeats, William Butler, 'Under Ben Bulben', The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, The Macmillan Company,1956.
- Borges, Jorge Luis, 'Everything and Nothing', Spanish, trans. Kenneth Krabbenhoft, Selected Poems, ed. Alexander Coleman, Viking Penguin,1999.
- Harris, Roy, The Origin of Writing, Open Court Publishing Co.,1986.
- Zukav, Gary, The Seat of the Soul, Free Press,1990.
- Francis, Robert, 'Old Roofs', Robert Francis: Collected Poems,1936-1976, University of Massachusetts Press,1985.
- Olds, Sharon, 'The Race', Strike Sparks, Alfred A. Knopf,2004.
- Larkin, Philip, 'Church Going', Collected Poems, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux,2004.
- Levine, Philip, 'You Can Have It', New Selected Poems, Alfred A. Knopf,1994.
- Milosz, Czeslaw, 'Ars Poetica? ', Polish, trans. Czeslaw Milosz & Lillian Vallee, New and Collected Poems, The Ecco Press,2003.
- Homer, The Iliad, IX & XIV, Greek, trans. Alexander Pope, Penguin Books,1996.
COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Denis Mair 09 May 2017

An excellent grappling with the social and psychic ramifications of goal seeking behavior. How real is a goal if thinking is distorted to hold it high? It is wonderful that you have gleaned so much from the humanistic tradition about where purpose fits into our psychic economy. What you have done seems like a piece of literary performance art or conceptual art: you have set yourself the purpose of ferreting out the best that has been thought and said about purpose. Such a work must have a higher purpose, but it must be imagined or divined through acts of reception.

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