'Tis Here! 'Tis Here! 'Tis Gone! (The Nature of Presence)

"A white horse, Linda Gregg wrote, is not a horse, / quoting what Hui Shih said twenty-three hundred / years ago. The thing is not its name, is not / the words. The painting of a pipe is not a pipe / regardless of what the title claims... / Consciousness is not / matter dreaming. If all the stars were added / together they would still not know it's spring. / The silence of the mountain is not our silence. / The sound of the earth will never be Un bel di. / We are a contingent occurrence." ~ Jack Gilbert