from Something Solid: Miscellaneous Sonnets: Butler Pike
The entropy, enervation of a recession—
consciousness rots, abraded by the obtrusiveness
of a dull, jagged populace— I stroll down
Butler Pike, snapping pictures of the houses,
& the buildings penetrate into my brain,
more than the people. Architecture is its
own phenomenological explosion, occupying
space inside/outside the mind, standing in now,
for better or for worse, for the people who
could occupy similar space— what I notice,
as sentience emanating from the buildings,
is that architecture is how the human race
expresses its relationship to nature. Here,
our choice is a sturdy yet ethereal harmony,
formidable, eerie, which foresees who might
occupy the houses, & yet chooses to manifest
the ornate over the plebeian, or merely practical.
When the ornate (the aesthetic) is set in place
in the Philadelphia suburbs, it is an expression,
also, of the region's apparitional vision, relation to
a wider world than even material nature; out
into physical space, into the cosmos, against
the restraining force of the earthly. So, in a
roundabout way, I get closer to the individuals
who have planned or charted the buildings
through allowing them (both) to seep into my brain.
Relationships, in recessional times, abstract
themselves— I stretch towards acceptance, gratitude.
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