For instances ("O would I were where I would be!")

i

Weary at words — ceased
where go cannot go —

in a secret babble. Many
a hazard, and many O

— - — - —

arcs to Orion, sad-ohs for
shadows' throb. Dots. We

syllabled and lay — low,
dispersed, and weary.




ii

were wind led by wind,
invisible or infinite —

delights but thus parted
when departed — all

kind of vapors, bested

— - — - —

— all goods point night






[Another of the "For instances" sequence; others and explanation are here, here, here, here and here.

The source text in this "instance" is a poem — variously identified as a nursery rhyme, or as an English ballad titled "Suspiria" — that first came to my attention as the epigraph to Susan Howe's Western Borders. If the rhyme's attention to subtle-yet-significant shifts of sound and meaning — and the close unfolding and folding-in of its minimal vocabulary — resonate with Howe's interest in "the articulation of sound forms," they bear a similar correspondence with Gertrude Stein's work.]