Anton Kolig, Kleiner Kniender Narziss, 1920



The lover of self is a verb-monstrosity,

all the pure dappled nouns it longs to deplume

into a plain of tautologous goose-flesh. 
You can’t beat back your background;

the greenery shakes its fresh birthright

about your ears, a halo of gnats

catch the light by treachery.

After the self-chore your knees

are bored as stakes, your toes

rise from the tiny graves they’d dug.

Leaning over the sweet-rippled substrate,

suffering the nostrils’ lesser joke;

so sinks your expression. To love

is to know nothing more

of one’s penetralia, love is a lathering. 
There’s no time saved or lost in monologue;

at some point each question stops

its quivering, is laid to rest.

How many men throughout history

have come into their flaming hearth,

to clash element with element? …

Synapse sizzes then is dim.
You cannot fathom what it’s like

for the world to be under water.

You only see it, from on high,

in vertigo’s negligent clutch;

wracked, yes, but impervious. 
You stand: as the first plains man

you are maladaptively loose-limbed.

As the operose angel of history

you really are just looking at your feet.