Tony Brinkley

In the Presence of My Enemies


      There is the grand truth . . . . He says No! in thunder; but the
      Devil himself cannot make him say yes.

                                                —Herman Melville, From a letter to Hawthorne

      [T]he EVERLASTING NO (das ewige Nein) pealed
      authoritatively through all the recesses of my Being, of my ME;
      and then was it that my whole ME stood up . . . borne aloft into
      the azure of Eternity. . . . the EVERLASTING YEA. . . .Be no
      longer a Chaos, but a World. . . . Whatsoever thy hand findeth to
      do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; for
      the Night cometh, wherein no man can work.

                                                —Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus

      Now I don’t need to always say NO anymore.
                                                —From a dream (1930s), dreaming Fascism’s Yes — a
                                                nightmare recorded in The Third Reich of Dreams by Charlotte Beradt

Your eyes in the dark teethe your gaze — I say
No – the spaces echo my word: No! If I could
be less than nothing in your eyes — that’s the

trick — to hide in the things that you see you
don’t see — at random among objects — voids in
the emptiness — or in handfuls of water your

hands can’t take hold of? . . . In hiding — con-
cealed in your sight with no insight — among
things as they are in themselves as is — beyond

grasping when trying to hold what your grasp. . . .
Does No mean Yes if you say, Yes! it does?
Does I-will-not tell you I will? To be dressed

in your eyes I’m undressed in my mind but dis-
guise how undressed I feel. . . . In the dark, this
darkness is not a little dark — it does not wash

out in the wash from the wash — from dresses
an outcry stains. . . . In the dark I say No, and
you say I meant YesNo is Yes in these circles

of enemies. I am lying, you say, but I’m telling
the truth. . . In the dark, insects listen and hear
the trees cry for the generations of leaves.


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