Unset

The day bloomed outward
from the bedclothes of the sun
like a detonation, like
the lifetime's work of the eye,
little red likelihood, and
then things were more visible,
how the houses came to be
built on a hill at the end
of the boulevard we were driving
down when you said "Somebody
thought about this road" as if
the grand design of mercurial
American wealth promised
into the landscape was thinking
and of course it is, the way
holding out your imbricated
fingers - "here is the church,
here is the steeple" - is
thinking, a lifetime of exchange-
values is thinking,
architecture is thinking for us,
mnemonic devices such as
Every Good Boy Deserves Favor
are thinking for us, the radio
is remembering only for us,
it has nothing else in mind,
nothing is nothing if not thinking,
we are driving east into the history
of thought along the Embarcadero
which is suddenly named Galvez,
even the road is having second
thoughts, we talk about our mutual
friend whose wife thinks
that if you stare at objects
hard enough you can see
their particles swarming lucently
like moths around a lightbulb,
how every lightbulb is a thought,
each cartoon bubble moored
invisibly to our heads is a thought
but what fills it is thinking,
"The world is too much with us"
is thinking, work is work
but surviving to write book
after book about it is thinking,
"I am nothing but must be
everything" is pure thinking:
the brain in flames like a permanent
seizure, like a tree filled
with bright birds burning
near the edge of the gated city
when the sun has not set
exactly but landed in plain sight,
it turns out to be a dull sphere
about sixty feet across cast
from iron and a few of the heavier
elements, it was originally designed
by Michelangelo to fit inside
the Sistine Chapel, circling
perpetually over the nave,
lighting everything evenly that
objects would be more visible,
such was his thinking, such was
his lifetime of work which
you would have done for free,
for the fire in the brain's fold -
you will not eclipse yourself
with the old fury when you're old,
nothing stolen, nothing
borrowed, nothing sold

                 -Joshua Clover