The Premises of Grass
The Laughing Philosopher has entered
the Witless Relocation Program
Outside his window there’s a rooster
that looks like a toaster
In the field there’s a cow
on whose rump sits a crow
The crow snaps its wings, caws erratically
but the cow only smiles enigmatically
The
Laughing Philosopher thinks,
Ah Nature
nonexistent daughter
of the rhetoric of cognition
We cannot reach you
But there are your representatives
speechless, the animals
conscious machines
of self-replicating nucleic acids
What is life Nature
How does it appear
by accident
How does it stand
on its own four feet
What does it see
out of the moist convexity of its eye
—Eugene Ostashevsky
About the Author
Eugene Ostashevsky is the author of Iterature, a forthcoming book of poems. He lives in Brooklyn.
