Today's Date — Summary

Barrett WattenContemplative

Pick up on grand torque-suitably an abstract reference. Can-needs must-be inclusive. Those latent charms, so hard to get across. Easy-filling the day with detachable items. Day begins in haze as trucks begin to move. All around the edges of the town. The monuments encased in fog. A line of bicyclists streaming past the deserted sports palace, the marsh slipping back in over the faltering road. The contributions of day-laborers towards colonial bamboo tower. Each succeeding generation of monumentality bears its own distinct relation to air plane, street lights, noise in wind. The generations crowd each other out, until no sequence-nothing wiggles in the void. You have flat space, are seen wandering in streets now no apparent movement. The cause and linked condition you are in. Delicate balance to adjust, mainsprings, cycled out, carried down, moved around, sent ahead. You snap back, you place it, you name it, you use it, you eat. All this moves out against morning's sluggish heat. I could say now I'm here, I have arrived. The work is itself, you have an honest thing to make.

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Watten's poem tries to build a day out of broken pieces, and the language itself feels assembled that way. Sentences stop short, hyphens join words that don't quite belong together, and the speaker seems to be hunting for a starting point: "Pick up on grand torque." We get a foggy morning at the edge of a town, with trucks moving, bicyclists streaming past an empty sports palace, and monuments wrapped in mist. Nothing settles into a clear story.

The middle of the poem turns to the idea of monuments and generations, each leaving its mark until they "crowd each other out." The result is a flat, directionless space where a "you" wanders without clear purpose. The mood is hazy, restless, and a little uneasy, yet it ends with something steadier. "I could say now I'm here, I have arrived" is hedged by "could," but the last line settles on a simple idea: the work exists in itself, and making an honest thing is enough.

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