An Insignificant Crisis in the Life of J. Dwight Nelson

I

‘This is all I know of human nature:
Men have always labored to build walls,
Definite angles and straight lines,
Always regular designs,
Mass-replicated bricks, a singular plural feature;
It really doesn’t matter if one falls,
For wallness matters more than any wall,
And humanness is that they build at all.

‘Sometimes I doubt
If they keep things in
Or lock things out,
Those wall-building men –
Or maybe neither matters very much,
They only want the somethingness – a wall
Is a sphere-bridge, point of contact, corporal:
Walls were made to touch.’

– He thought (with thoughts that no one understands),
And turned the corner where that white wall bends.

II

He caught the ray of a bright eye as it dropped,
And shudderingly felt it not for him;
Yet transfixed he stopped
And felt his own eye dim,
Conjecturing behind her swelling breasts
Emotions that were the antithesis
Of all that ever had been his:
He thought, ‘Upon the wall her white hand rests:
Do I suppose too much
When I say that walls were made to touch?’

III

He stared at the monotonous white wall,
Fearing a door that openly concealed
The empty darkness of a lightless hall;
All that the door revealed
Was naked contrast, blackness fronting whiteness:
He wondered at the whatness of it all
Until the tearing contrast seized his soul –
Drowning him in ubiquitous otherness –

Groping he gasped, wondering if he dreamed –
Silently he screamed.

IV

As an ant on a glass globe crawls
In ever-widening circles from the top
And knows where it must stop
On the sharply-sloping globe before it falls:

As an ant on a glass globe crawls
His mind crawls on the reality-sphere,
Groping for walls,
Transfixed by fear,
Wishing he were in
But pressed against the top,
Fearing what hand will make the glass globe spin,
Terrified to drop.

As an ant on a glass globe crawls
His mind crawls on the reality-sphere.

V

Say, J. Dwight Nelson, why you’re terrified,
Tell me what you suppose your white walls hide –
What if the wall conceals the breast of God?

‘There is a fountain filled with blood.’

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