As John Lysaker explained on Tuesday, poetry was a central source of ideas (or meaning--"sinn") for Martin Heidegger's philosophy. Please read the three poems below, in the context of our discussion of Heidegger's claims in the "Memorial Address." Do these poems help to open readers' minds to "the mystery" he describes, in the midst of our technological age? Sharon Olds, "The Underlife" Waiting for the subway, bad station, no one near me, the walls dark and slimy, waiting in the bowel heart of the city, I look down into the pit where the train rides and see a section of grey rail de- tach itself and move along the packed silt floor of the pit. It is the first rat I have seen on the subway in twenty years and at first a shudder runs over me as naturally as wind ripples water in the upper world of light, I draw back, but then I think of my son's mice and lean forward--this is wild-life, the ones who survive in the city as if it were a ruin. And the rat is smallish, not big as a cat like those rats that eat babies, it is ash-grey and although it must be filthy it doesn't look greasy but rather silvery and filth-fluffy, and though its ears are black you can see the slightest bit of dark light through them as if under the steel-dust they're translucent. It glides along the side of the rail, it does not look bitter or malicious, it does not look evil, just cautious and domestic, innocent as a lion is innocent. Back home I wash and wash my hands and get into bed with a book, and as I sink down calmly to read, a part of the amber pattern on the sheet detaches itself and moves as if a tiny bit of the earth's crust were moving--Christ I slap at it crying out You jerk! You jerk! and of course it's a cockroach, minion of the night city, has lived in the ruins of all cities before their razing and after it. Christ you guys, I address these beasts, I know about the dark floor of life shifting! I watched the cancer take my father and alter him so he did not fit the space he was set in, I saw that cancer wiggle him like a bad tooth and finally tear him out of the picture so I saw the blank behind him, I know all this! And the roach and the rat turn to me with that swivelling turn of natural animals and they say to me, We are not educators, we come to you from him, to bring you his love. ___________________ Simon Ortiz, "Stuff: Chickens and Bombs" Wiley, from Arkansas, and I worked a couple times in Yellowcake. Wiley usually worked in scrap yard, sorting scrap so the company could sell it or use it again. I usually worked in Crushing where the uranium stuff was just rocks and dirt. In Yellowcake, we packed the processed stuff which is a yellow powder into fifty-gallon drums and wheeled them out to waiting trucks bound for where we didn't know. Once, thinking I knew something I told Wiley that the governement used the yellowcake for bombs and reactors and experiments. Wiley studied my face a minute, then he spat on the ground and said, "once, I worked in a chicken factory. We plucked and processed chickens so people could eat 'em. I don't know what the hell else you could do with them." _____________________ Elizabeth Bishop, "At the Fishhouses" Although it is a cold evening, down by one of the fishhouses an old man sits netting, his net, in the gloaming almost invisible, a dark purple-brown, and his shuttle worn and polished. The air smells so strong of codfish it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water. The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up to storerooms in the gables for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on. All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea, swelling slowly as if considering spilling over, is opaque, but the silver of the benches, the lobster pots, and masts, scattered among the wild jagged rocks, is of an apparent translucence like the small old buildings with an emerald moss growing on their shoreward walls The big fish tubs are completely lined with layers of beautiful herring scales and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered with creamy iridescent coats of mail, with small iridescent flies crawling on them. Up on the little slope behind the houses, set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass, is an ancient wooden capstan, cracked, with two long bleached handles and some melancholy stains, like dried blood, where the ironwork has rusted. The old man accepts a Lucky Strike. He was a friend of my grandfather. We talk of the decline in the population and of codfish and herring while he waits for a herring boat to come in. There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb. He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty, from unnumbered fish with that black old knife, the blade of which is almost worn away. Down at the water's edge, at the place where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp descending into the water, thin silver tree trunks are laid horizontally across the gray stones, down and down at intervals of four or five feet. Cold dark deep and absolutely clear, element bearable to no mortal, to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly I have seen here evening after evening. He was curious about me. He was interested in music; like me a believer in total immersion, so I used to sing him Baptist hymns. I also sang, " Mighty Fortress is Our God." He stood up in the water and regarded me steadily, moving his head a little. Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug as if it were against his better judgment. Cold dark deep and absolutely clear, the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us, the dignified tall firs begin. Bluish, associating with their shadows, a million Christmas trees stand waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones. I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same, slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones, icily free above the stones, above the stones and then the world. If you should dip your hand in, your wrist would ache immediately, your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn as if the water were a transmutation of fire that feeds on stones and burtns with a dark gray flame. If you tasted it, it would at first taste bitter, then briny, then surely burn your tongue. It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free, drawn from the cold hard mouth of the world, derived from the rocky breasts forever, flowing and drawn, and since our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown. ___________________________________________________ Similar to the Yellowcake theme above, here is something more direct from Springsteen ... Here in north east Ohio Back in eighteen-o-three James and Danny Heaton Found the ore that was linin' yellow creek They built a blast furnace Here along the shore And they made the cannon balls That helped the union win the war Here in Youngstown Here in Youngstown My sweet Jenny, I'm sinkin' down Here darlin' in Youngstown Well my daddy worked the furnaces Kept 'em hotter than hell I come home from 'Nam worked my way to scarfer A job that'd suit the devil as well Taconite, coke and limestone Fed my children and made my pay Them smokestacks reachin' like the arms of god Into a beautiful sky of soot and clay Here in Youngstown Here in Youngstown My sweet Jenny, I'm sinkin' down Here darlin' in Youngstown Well my daddy come on the 0hio works When he come home from world war two Now the yards just scrap and rubble He said, "Them big boys did what Hitler couldn't do" These mills they built the tanks and bombs That won this country's wars We sent our sons to Korea and Vietnam Now we're wondering what they were dyin' for Here in Youngstown Here in Youngstown My sweet Jenny, I'm sinkin' down Here darlin' in Youngstown From the Monongaleh valley To the Mesabi iron range To the coal mines of Appalacchia The story's always the same Seven-hundred tons of metal a day Now sir you tell me the world's changed Once I made you rich enough Rich enough to forget my name In Youngstown In Youngstown My sweet Jenny, I'm sinkin' down Here darlin' in Youngstown When I die I don't want no part of heaven I would not do heavens work well I pray the devil comes and takes me To stand in the fiery furnaces of hell _________________________________________________ And lastly, a classic When geometric diagrams and digits Are no longer the keys to living things When people who go about singing or kissing Know deeper things than the great scholars, When society is returned once more To unimprisoned life, and to the Universe, And when light and darkness mate Once more and make something entirely transparent And people see in poems and fairy tales The True history of the world, Then our entire twiested nature will turn And run when a single secret word is spoken --FRIEDRICH LEOPOLD, BARON VON HARDENBERG