George Oppen - New collected poems

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A pure mathematical series would be one in which each term is derived from the preceding term by a rule.

George Oppen

'O city ladies'
Your coats wrapped,
Your hips a possession
Your shoes arched
Your walk is sharp
Your breasts
Pertain to lingerie

George Oppen

And we saw the seed,
The minuscule Sequoia seed
In the museum by the tremendous slab
Of the tree. And imagined the seed
In soil and the growth quickened
So that we saw the seed reach out, forcing
Earth thru itself into bark, wood, the green
Needles of a redwood until the tree
Stood in the room without soil—
How much of the earth's
Crust has lived
The seed's violence!
The shock is metaphysical.

George Oppen

They have lost the metaphysical sense
Of the future, they feel themselves
The end of a chain
Of lives, single lives
And we know that lives
Are single
And cannot defend
The metaphysic
On which rest
The boundaries
Of our distances.

George Oppen