II. MIGRATION
           
           

          Loosen up, tongue,
          are you ready?
          a little poison ink
          with which to think

          A little poison ink to loosen the tongue,
          a few harsh words to loosen the pen
          before taking a stab at such
          promising blankness: and have no fear
          nor thought of fear, and have no thought
          nor fear of thought—
           

            scratch away ink
            you are only touching the surface

            scratch away ink
            you are only scratching at the surface
             

          so near, and so white, the snow.
          Yet where the signified is, there, too, grows
          that which signifies. In darkness
          dwells the darkness: the light goes away
          through the dogwood trees
          until I was carried away, far
          out of my parents’ house.
          And opened up before me: in radiance, mysterious, white
          on a field of white, black
          on a black ground—Who’s afraid

          of red yellow and blue? reflected
          in the snow, enwrapping
          a subtle body of immaterial color.
          First snow falls through harmonistic trees
          branching plus, branching minus

          whose cumulative charge is a figure of ice
          whose blue eye focused
          principally on trees
          until the figure became confused
          with the Tree A.
          Reflected in the snow.
          Where the human

          or a lonely dog’s bark,
          a wooden frame
          for a rucksack, a box
          made from birch bark,
          an unfinished longbow,
          a grass mat
          and some socks,—

          Disease and health the same
          seed cell at the independent
          origin of life, inert seed
          of essence, from which grows
          the shoot of life, upon which feeds
          the bird of sense and sign:
          wonder, miracle, prodigy
          of the being of reason

          whose subtle skin of immaterial color
          lying just below the surface of the snow,
           

            abundantly disfigured, abundantly misshapen

            bungling scrawl and scribble—
             

          whose final black point, the seed
          lying just below the surface
          of the skin, ice
           
                   of skin
             of ice
               even
          eels in vinegar
           
             bore a resemblance.
             
             
          III. ADVANCE PROXY