Metonymy as an Approach to a Real World

Whether what we sense of this world
is the what of this world only, or the what
of which of several possible worlds
--which what?--something of what we sense
may be true, may be the world, what it is, what we sense.
For the rest, a truce is possible, the tolerance
of travelers, eating foreign foods, trying words
that twist the tongue, to feel that time and place,
not thinking that this is the real world.

Conceded, that all the clocks tell local time;
conceded, that "here" is anywhere we bound
and fill a space; conceded, we make a world:
is something caught there, contained there,
something real, something which we can sense?
Once in a city blocked and filled, I saw
the light lie in the deep chasm of a street,
palpable and blue, as though it had drifted in
from say, the sea, a purity of space.

- William Bronk (1964)

Ozu Stills

Shook Ones

At issue were blankets
of sediment, uplifted---

(our ledger
broke lucky: schist)

In what spirit and to what end

that precisionist fathom, "purged
of anecdotal details"---set off,

we ring out, upend each vendor's
angle, keeping time

...
Strait-laced, we saw you lovies
opt for gray-scale prating

Instead, to have say
to make known or do
To cast together feathery-
delicate valves-n-portals

like,
"the spur.....the spar.....the slur

purls, mutedly"