Notes on Cid Corman’s “Fire”

Is it the
principle
or process

of desire?
To take some
thing at all

once from it
self until
it pervades

emptiness—
warms and glows
and goes out.

But what is
out that is
not into?

*

—

It seems like someone has been staring at a candle, looking at how much (and how much nothing) goes into that hunger. Including his/her thoughts, desires, thoughts of desire, and desire to think—all of which should be eliminated if there’s to be any hope at all of extinguishing the ego, suffering.

—

The stanza cut yields us both. The sentence assigns pervades to it (it pervades emptiness, which seems to be something both occupying and being occupied by emptiness) but the cut allows emptiness its own stanza, where it may warm and glow, maybe as something quite distinct from just an emptied out some/thing.

—

Another, burdened with saying what’s nothing in such space.

—