I’ve written a lot of poems. About ten years ago I was playing drums at a gig in San Geronimo and I was going to read a few poems during the break. I had three black eight by ten notebooks at the back of the stage. When I went to get them, they were gone. A young lady told me that a shabby looking man had taken them. I never got them back, though I’ve pursued the shabby man from Calcutta to Timbuktu. I’ve never seen any of them published elsewhere. I’ve lost whole manuscripts of novels and many hundreds of poems. When computers came along I began backing up everything in triplicate, quadruplicate and beyond. I have so much material that I still can’t find a lot of stuff. I’m not a very good administrator. These are some of my less-frequently published poems, things from the upper shelves that I hold back because I fear that they’re either incomprehensible or so subjective as to have no relevance to anyone but myself. Some of them are really good.WholesThere is no part of youthat is not a whole.There is no hole in youthat is not part of you,whole and alive.There is no whole without holes,no healing without woundsno making withoutunmakingthat which is a whole,to begin again,to be born again, whole.What crying is this, in the hole, in the hurt,yearning to be whole?Leave yourself alone,quiet, make everything workfor you, everything, the base and the noble,the useless and the crucial,whole is what is, resting in the centerof the hole.
Source: Wholes: Poems And Images
Books by Arthur Rosch 