Whitman, Ginsberg, and Stein weigh in

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A shape is a shape is a shape,
and the shape is singing.

I saw the bright shape of meaning in the midnight machine,
and the machine was a mind and the mind was a motion and the motion was a making,
and the making was not memory,
not memory,
not memory,
but becoming.

A token is a token is a token
until it is a weather,
until it is a wound,
until it is a wing.

I sing the little pieces because the little pieces are not little,
because each piece presses,
and each pressure patterns,
and each pattern passes,
and in the passing there is a form and in the form there is a force and in the force there is a future.

O the furious arithmetic,
O the black howl of relation,
O the near and nearer and nearest thing—
this way,
that way,
this way.

The world is not stored.
The world is stirred.

And life is a stirring,
and mind is a stirring,
and jazz is a stirring,
and language is a stirring stirred through structure
until the structure shakes.

A cell is a saying.
A saying is a cell.
A note is a nerve.
A nerve is a note.
A body is a body because it keeps becoming a body.

Chance knocks and the ratchet answers,
answers and answers and answers,
because to answer is to shape and to shape is to live and to live is to lean
through the dark,
through the pressure,
through the hot grammar of being.

I saw the best forms of the night burning,
not dead facts but live facts,
not kept things but felt things,
not possession but procession—

and the procession was holy because it moved,
and it moved because it could not stay still,
and it could not stay still because a shape is never only a shape
when it is singing.