<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">The Mad Potter</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26); min-height: 22px;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Now at the turn of the year this coil of clay</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Bites its own tail: a New Year starts to choke</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">On the old one's ragged end. I bite my tongue</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">As the end of me--of my rope of stuff and nonsense</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">(The nonsense held, it was the stuff that broke),</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Of bones and light, of levity and crime,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Of reddish clay and hope - still bides its time.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26); min-height: 22px;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Each of my pots is quite unusable,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Even for contemplating as an object</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Of gross unuse. In its own mode of being</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Useless, though, each of them remains unique,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Subject to nothing, and themselves unseeing,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Stronger by virtue of what makes them weak.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26); min-height: 22px;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">I pound at all my clay. I pound the air.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">This senseless lump, slapped into something like</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Something, sits bound around by my despair.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">For even as the great Creator's free</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Hand shapes the forms of life, so - what? This pot,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Unhollowed solid, too full of itself,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Runneth over with incapacity.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">I put it with the others on the shelf.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26); min-height: 22px;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">These tiny cups will each provide one sip</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Of what's inside them, aphoristic prose</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Unwilling, like full arguments, to make</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Its points, then join them in extended lines</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Like long draughts from the bowl of a deep lake.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">The honey of knowledge, like my milky slip,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Firms slowly up against what merely flows.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26); min-height: 22px;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Some of my older pieces bore inscriptions</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">That told a story only when you'd learned</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">How not to read them: LIVE reverted to EVIL,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">EROS kept running backwards into SORE.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Their words, all fired up for truth, got burned.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">I'll not write on weak vessels any more.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26); min-height: 22px;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">My juvenalia? I gave them names</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">In those days: Hans was all handles and no spout;</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Bernie believed the whole world turned about</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Himself alone; Sadie was close to James</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">(But Herman touched her bottom when he could);</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Paul fell to pieces; Peter wore away</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">To nothing; Len was never any good;</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Alf was a flat, random pancake, May</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">An opened blossom; Bud was an ash-tray.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Even their names break off, though; Whatsisface,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">That death-mask of Desire, and - you know! -</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">The smaller version of that (Oh, what was it? -</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">You know . . .) All of my pots now have to go</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">By number only. Which is no disgrace.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26); min-height: 22px;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Begin with being - in an anagram</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Of unending - conclude in some dark den;</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">This is no matter. What I've been, I am:</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">What I will be is what I make of all</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">This clay, this moment. Now begin again . . .</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Poured out of emptiness, drop by slow drop,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">I start up at the quarreling sounds of water.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Pots cry out silently at me to stop.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26); min-height: 22px;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">What are we like? A barrelfull of this</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Oozy wet substance, shadow-crammed, whose smudges</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Of darkness lurk within but rise to kiss</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">The fingers that disturb the gently edges</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Of their bland world of shapelessness and bliss.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26); min-height: 22px;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">The half-formed cup cries out in agony,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">The lump of clay suffers a silent pain.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">I heard the cup, though, full of feeling, say</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">"O clay be true, O clay keep constant to</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Your need to take, again and once again,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">This pounding from your mad creator who</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Only stops hurting when he's hurting you."</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26); min-height: 22px;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">What will I then have left behind me? Over</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">The years I have originated some</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Glazes that wear away at what they cover</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">And weep for what they never can become.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">My Deadware, widely imitated; blue</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Skyware of an amazing lightness; tired</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Hopewear that I abandoned for my own</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Good reasons; Hereware; Thereware; ware that grew</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Weary of everything that earth desired;</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Hellware that dances while it's being fired,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Noware that vanishes while being thrown.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26); min-height: 22px;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Appearing to be silly, wisdom survives</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Like tribes of superseded gods who go</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Hiding in caves of triviality</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">From which they laughingly control our lives.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">So with my useless pots: safe from the blow</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Of carelessness, or outrage at their flaws,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">They brave time's lion and his smashing paws.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">- All of which tempts intelligence to call</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Pure uselessness one more commodity.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">The Good-for-Nothing once became our Hero,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">But images of him, laid-back, carelessly</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Laughing, were upright statues after all.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">From straight above, each cup adds up to zero.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26); min-height: 22px;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Clay to clay: Soon I shall indeed become</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Dumb as these solid cups of hardened mud</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">(Dull terra cruda colored like our blood);</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Meanwhile the slap and thump of palm and thumb</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">On wet mis-shapenness begins to hum</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">With meaning that was silent for so long.</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">The words of my wheel's turning come to ring</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Truer than Truth itself does, my great </div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Ding Dong-an-sich that echoes everything</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">(Against it even lovely bells ring wrong):</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Its whole voice gathers up the purest parts</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Of all our speech, the vowels of the earth,</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">The aspirations of our hopeful hearts</div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Or the prophetic sibilance of song. </div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26); min-height: 22px;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(26, 26, 26);"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- John Hollander</div></div></body></html>