Worlds Enough and Time

Abstract

Worlds Enough and Time John Koethe (bio) It's presumptuous, but if you're reading this youProbably know my usual obsessions and preoccupations:The "world"—both the word and what it stands for—and time,Which is or isn't real, depending on my mood. I've alwaysHated poems about philosophy, and I hope I still do,But since I don't know what that means anymore, here I am,Musing on my ends and my beginnings one more time,As though to be alive were just to wonder what they were,While all the while inhabiting three worlds: the private worldThat's coextensive with my life and ends with it; the worldThat everyone inhabits, that's indifferent to anything that anyoneBelieves or feels; and the problematic one behind them bothThat spreads through time in ways that make it hardTo understand how the other two could possibly be real. Meanwhile I'm on the balcony with a drink in my handAnd looking at the leaves. If I were a different kind of poetI'd note the contrast with a deprecating irony and just leave it there,But I'm not and I won't. People write books about philosophy and physicsWe're supposed to understand and don't, and nobody complains.Life is more complex than either, since it includes them both, yet poems,Which are simply life articulated, are supposed to be as clear as dayTo anyone who takes the time to read them on the run. When I'm askedWhat my poems say, I say that it's whatever's on my mind— for life [End Page 45] Means having something on your mind, whether you understand it or not.Right now it's the idea that as it flows through time the world keepsBranching into versions of itself, and I do too—an idea that's meant to bePure mathematics, though I haven't got a clue to what it means. Whatever else exists beyond the page of the mind, there'sSomeplace hidden from us where we don't exist at all. I guessIt's all around us, though by definition we don't really know.I went to a talk this afternoon on the quaint idea of GodPhilosophers of religion love to play around with, though I didn'tStay for the discussion, since I didn't want to play. I grew up believingSomething like it; then it disappeared. Theories have to answerTo both our private and public worlds, and that one didn't.Sometimes I wonder if the hidden world I do believe in isn't doomedTo vanish too, since it can't accommodate the others, as the mindOf seventy-three can't understand the infant consciousness it used to beAnd can't even imagine anymore. Confined to the imaginationOr released from it, you're limited to what you understand and feel,Which keeps diminishing over the years, until you're finallyLeft with nothing new to say. I hope they'll get it right someday,Though by then I'll be gone. For now, feeling it's somethingI don't understand will have to do, sitting out here on the balconyUnder the trees and an empty blue sky, looking at the leavesAnd living within the limits. And anyway, it's what I want to do. [End Page 46] John Koethe john koethe is the author of several collections of poetry, including Beyond Belief and Walking Backwards: Poems, 1966–2016. He has received the Lenore Marshall, Kingsley Tufts, and Frank O'Hara awards, and teaches at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Copyright © 2022 Yale University