Sestina

Is this object:
not to let things pass
without noticing,
without being in control,
at least of a clear sight?
There are so many things worth nothing.

I sit hour after hour, doing nothing-
dreaming of India, a far green object,
a blinding sun hung on the edge my sight.
One moment I think I am writing, the next I pass
into infinite fields, and a sky whose control
rains absolute, unnoticing.

I try to think--but find myself noticing
each word sealed off from its thought by a round nothing.
Something is out of control;
I do not even object,
unaware that the hours pass,
that the present moment is buried from sight

by this vision of me in India, allowing my sight
to filter off in the distance, noticing
my feet pass over the lawn, my eyes pass
over and over the garden, settling on nothing.
Such a relief, sight without object.
Such a relief, to let control

be a process like breathing; to let control
lies in the targets of sight,
lie, if anywhere, lost in the heart of the object,
and to let the effort of noticing
soak like rain in that tree, that flower, that nothing.
Every moment something is coming to pass.

I remember a high brown mountain: a pass
cut through it, jagged, holding in control
the animals, trees, underbrush, and sky--nothing
escaped, not even my sight;
and the pass extinguished itself as a temple on top, without noticing
it had used itself up, it had reached its object.
Is this the object: to pass,

without noticing, beyond control,
beyond fixed sight, beyond nothing?

-Judith Kroll