MAXIMUS

#1

A giant body spans the open field –
Gloucester’s exile, child of Los, a face
there, vespertine cognition, morning shield:
res ipsa loquitur – non verba, res.
Thus head by way of ear, to syllable,
‘the eare’s a rationall sence & a chiefe judge
of proportion,’ (Vinculum juris!). The bul-
wark rose through heart, by way of breath (A smudge
of ink upon the page.) to line, the prac-
tice of the self, root city, dwelling, a-
gent of emotive intellect, the (praq-
lit or qategor, this angel?) way: 
Adam Qadmon in Dogtown. (Grasp thy morn-
ing knowledge, archaeologist of mourn-

#2

ing!) Skin, my skin, (Demising wall.), come meet
the world you are a part of, & greet that twin
of life, its codomain, a non-discrete
whole forged of the discrete, rhythm, an in-
terstice of consciousness. The thing. The thing
kinetic, reenact it – res, non ver-
ba – only valid metaphysic. Sing,
do not describe, enact and sing it. Der
Weg stirbt. To circumscribe description and
delimit logic’s scope and range, Charles, thy
prescription. Glass and falling grains of sand.
(Epiphany? Apophany?) Thus I.
To objectify the life of feeling, we
enact the body, poem, twin, decree.

#3

I’ve had to learn the simplest things (indeed
the simplest) last. What does not change, the will
to change, held fast to, syllables that speed
and post, congeal, refuse diaeresis. Still-
ness of geography, the central fact:
the field, the breath, conjectured into bloom.
And words, words, words – the sentence, Charles (Intact,
after all!), first act of nature, syntax, tomb
of logic, hewn to, law above conven-
tion, broken open, open field. (Old saw
of form and content.) An act of verse. Again
this myth of time and poetry, thy law.
The sonnet is a hieroglyph: its yield,
a spawning matrix in the open field.

ERIC T. RACHER was born in Akron, Ohio and currently lives in Riga, Latvia. He is the author of a chapbook of poetry, Five Functions Defined on Experience: for Jay Wright, published in 2021.