More on the preceeding title. If you haven't read the previous two posts, it's imperative that you do so

Now let's look at another of Justice's chance experiments, "The Assassination."

"The Assassination"

It begins again, the nocturnal pulse.

It courses through the cables laid for it.

It mounts to the chandeliers and beats there, hotly.

We are too close. Too late, we would move back.

We are involved with the surge.

Now it bursts. Now it has been announced.

Now it is being soaked up by newspapers.

Now it is running through the streets.

The crowd has it. The woman selling carnations

And the man in the straw hat stand with it in their shoes.

Here is the red marquee it sheltered under,

Here is the ballroom, here

The sadly various orchestra led

By a single gesture. My arms open.

It enters. Look, we are dancing.

June 5, 1968

For context, June 5, 1968 was the day that RFK was shot. I know this because my birthday is the day after, June 6^th.

Although we know that this is about an assassination, the most important part of the poem is that it never says what “it” is. Hell, it doesn’t even really come close to even implying what “it” is. This “it” is portrayed as some kind of animal, invisibly lurking.

“the nocturnal pulse./It courses through the cables laid for it./It mounts. “It bursts,” “it is running,” “it sheltered under,” “it enters.”

The chance methods involved in writing this poem tie into the vagueness of Justice’s use of “it.” Chance, being this intangible, mathematical force that inconspicuously governs so many aspects of our lives, ties nicely into the unnamed “it.”

The question that I will leave with, and will come back to in subsequent posts (because of this I’ll respectfully ask that you don’t comment on this post with your theories), is why Justice would choose to use his now famous “chance method” for the poem “Clock.” Clocks are lauded for their extraordinary regularity and order, hardly something governed by chance. Here it is:

Clock

These quiet hands, their gestures,

These circles drawn upon air.

And the whiteness of the face

That attends the unspoken.

This listening of the deaf.