Aught No. 11/12 (2003) - Sumrall, To That Which

Aught, no. 11/12 (2003)

Daniel Sumrall

To that which

A cataract’s blind brink streams as fierce as tautened
jaw guiding gladless eyes toward autumn’s light torrent.

Like all Protestant music, like all men praised and
then revenged upon, recognition, that strain of

voice terribly bland in its profound volume,
rises then blends, sonorous and deliberate,

into an even measure, an impersonal
yet attached musing tone. To words that move alone

through sheer inertia, nondescript in the slow ache
of worn leaves petaling water’s skin, so to

object but then to relent upon entering
available although unaware, thus, sincere.

Gathering austere garments so that that thought may
emerge blankly minded in the lost verge and so

say, “Oh, gloss only parade, the stayed strophe of
particular pleasures—the spar and its like—that

jet crystalline unlike this sluttish world sharding
about in vain, inglorious, promiscuity.”