"one question answered by your life" - new work from yesterday

I. 

one question answered by your life

will be how well you have handled adversity—

how well you have held your old bronze shield

against the vicissitudes

of the colorful phenomenal world—

and it holds being in the form of liquid gas or solid

and the solids are the least red with danger

the least obstinate the least in opposition

to your clung to and worn out will

and what, by the way, is your will

and what protection does it afford you

joined with and holding up your shield?

II.
could it have been that one choice you made

while you were eliminating the other choice

from your life and for which you would need

your old shield wielded by your lame

and sad and faltering will?—give it up—

your will is only one of the many other

of your quaint and made-up adversaries—

just as the shield melts

in the heat of the lesser energy

that exhausts itself as the portrayal

of the reality projected in light

and sound and phenomenal texture

experienced as though it were

all at once computer-generated

in a dark theatre without walls

and ceiling and structure at all

but still all darkness during

an early afternoon matinee

without light and without any thing

and without no thing—

nothing and every thing at all