I S S U E  10

Eric T. Racher

Sonnet X

For Susanne K. Langer and John Coltrane, written (mostly) inside 
a quote from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

‘The world [put under mind for verb and noun
in the unfolding of the object seen,
cognized in absentia, jotted down 
upon the brain’s scratch-pad, which thus, like spleen 
or heart, performs its task—symbolic trans-
formation of experience—(What ghost
there is is there, is the machine, perchance?),
unmeasured and unchiselled in its post, 
brought into focus with articulate
but non-discursive form, informing ray
that underwrites the symbol, intricate
with detail’s “thinking with the things as they 
exist”] is everything that is the case.’
The symbol, cause and cure of grace, disgrace. 

Eric T. Racher lives in Riga, Latvia. He is the author of a pamphlet of poetry, Five Functions Defined on Experience: For Jay Wright (2021).