III: TO MADIMI


I had no intention of
being numbered among
the people of the book:
little more
than a child, I aligned
myself with the gods
and derided the household
as animal.

I tried to set down
the system that my angel
taught, but found her
code dead upon
paper: the transmission
faltered because of
some lack within myself,
the medium.

I wished to accomplish
a style that heaven or hell
might find lucid: from
the outset I
knew the limit of each
book and the configuration
of material it should
contain.

(It had been left up
to me to assemble such a
canon as best I could
from any text
that came to hand.)

I did not understand
how I might oppose a power
indifferent to its location
in culture:
there could be no
resistance but a willed
failure, the decision to leave
no archive.