The Spirit by Michael Benedikt

Touches of the things upon which we press
Clutch back now; we reach out in thought
And feel their hands in ours
And together we walk down the long road between the summerlit trees
In the park, watching out for the rapists. We do not see anymore
In our room full of glossy furnitures
But feel them (the way we feel the sagging willowyness of that tree
Becoming emblematic of our tenuousness).
They are rising in their lumps and patterns
And we identify them with the various understructurings
Of the body we are forced to use
Whenever we set forth to explore the atmosphere, by breathing.

They have all become the actual people,
We the things.

From: Benedikt, Michael, “The Spirit” in Ambit, No. 33 (1967), p. 3.
(https://www.jstor.org/stable/44330557)

Date: 1967

By: Michael Benedikt (1935-2007)

Tags: 1967, michael benedikt, poetry, the spirit, touches of the things upon which we press