C.K. Williams

All But Always

1
If you were to possess a complicated
apparatus composed of many
intricate elements and operating
through a number of apparently unpredictable
processes, and if it were asked of you
to specify which parts of this contrivance
you had fabricated and which had come
to you already shaped and assembled,
which of its workings you'd conceived of
and set in motion yourself
and which were already under way
when it came into your posession,

2
and if you were unable to give
an unqualified response to these questions,
but were forced to admit that you
couldn't say with certainty whether
the activities of the thing were your doing
or the result of some other agency,
or even if its real purposes
had been decided by you, or anyone,
whether there was even a reason
for its being, other than
its always having been,
as far back as you can recall.