Inherent Transgression

Is falling always falling into hell
if you live in a time of real hell,
in a medieval painting, writhing
with the snake-faced demons…?

I took a small wrong step that felt
like I’d thrown my right foot
against a wall with all my unknown
forces, as if trying to destroy it.

I can’t state the problem very clearly,
the problem of knowledge, how the masks
that I carry have no eyes, how an octopus
can have no ears yet may still hear.

And in the second part of the dream,
the thing you think of as your self
is hardly there in the panel, it slides out
from under to the unseen side.