George Eliot

I Grant You Ample Leave

“I grant you ample leave
To use the hoary formula ‘I am’
Naming the emptiness where thought is not;
But fill the void with definition, ‘I’
Will be no more a datum than the words
You link false inference with, the ‘Since’ & ‘so’
That, true or not, make up the atom-whirl.
Resolve your ‘Ego’, it is all one web
With vibrant ether clotted into worlds:
Your subject, self, or self-assertive ‘I’
Turns nought but object, melts to molecules,
Is stripped from naked Being with the rest
Of those rag-garments named the Universe.
Or if, in strife to keep your ‘Ego’ strong
You make it weaver of the etherial light,
Space, motion, solids & the dream of Time–
Why, still ’tis Being looking from the dark,
The core, the centre of your consciousness,
That notes your bubble-world: sense, pleasure, pain,
What are they but a shifting otherness,
Phantasmal flux of moments?–”

— George Eliot

Crystal Wilkinson tells me that this is one of the poems first-place winner Barbara Gooding recited for Kentucky’s Poetry Out Loud competition. This poem is not easy to read and it makes a difficult argument. I’am impressed that Ms. Gooding took it on and apparently did it very well indeed.

Also, this being Women’s History Month, the poem seems appropriate to share.

Ms. Gooding also read Gerald Stern’s “Kissing Steiglitz Good-Bye.”