The Imaginary Real
How To Get There From Here
A roadmap
The factored world divides itself
turning its face from the square root of minus one.
Lofty designs, loftily lying, living and dying:
the imaginary world begins here.
It is time
to go down.
The border
From the pass one road returns
to the orderly democracy of the real.
The other road continues on
to the anarchy of the imaginary.
Proposition: cross one way
Corollary: the choice remains.
Proved: never return.
In the country of Thought
there are many houses—the Baron Rigor,
the Earl of Reason whose lands are all unknown.
While in another country, unbordered, unseen,
the traveler's guidebook goes unopened
and the tales are all unheard.
From here
all rivers run to the sea,
metropolis of rivers.
Who leaves the sea dies as rain
and runs down to the sea again.
Charles Brownson: I was born in South Dakota and earned my MFA from the University of Oregon in 1969. In 1972 I received an MLS from the University of California, Berkeley, and worked as an academic librarian in collection development and miscellaneous specialties until my retirement in 2005. I’ve written seven novels, a memoir, and a book on the detective as a cultural icon, but until recently most of this work went into my artists’ books, using my own handmade paper and artwork. In my will I’ve left instructions to be stuffed and given to the Smithsonian.
