Truth also is the pursuit of it: Like happiness, and it will not stand. ​Even the verse begins to eat away In the acid. Pursuit, pursuit; ​ A wind moves a little, Moving in a circle, very cold. ​How shall we say? In ordinary discourse— ​We must talk now. I am no longer sure of the words, The clockwork of the world. What is inexplicable ​Is the ‘preponderance of objects,’ The sky lights Daily with that predominance ​And we have become the present. ​We must talk now. Fear Is fear. But we abandon one another. 

 

​Leviathan, From New Collected Poems by George Oppen (1908-1984).