The Annihilation of Matter
William Bronk

The light at least was not to be dismissed
a hunked-up moon rode a starred sky.
Those objects- what were those objects? Some trivial trees.
Something. Never mind. It was the light
that mattered, as earlier- that afternoon-
the wash of sun crossing the same place;
but it was not the same in a different light.

Would it be otherwise in a real world?
Who could answer? Here, it was always the light
that mattered, and only the light. Once, it had seemed
the objects mattered: the light was to see them by.
Examined, they yielded nothing, nothing real.
They were for seeing the light in various ways.
They gathered it, released it, held it in.
In them, the light revealed itself, took shape.
Objects are nothing. There is only the light, the light!

http://mediamogul.seas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Bronk/Bronk-William_06_Annihilation-of-Matter_10-13-78.mp3

In “The Annihilation of Matter,” William Bronk depicts a world in which objects “yielded nothing, nothing real,” but rather existed “for seeing the light in various ways.” Bronk’s poem feels distant and irrelevant- an experiment only, to imagine a different world of perception- unless we consider the validity of his assertion in our own world. That objects remain constant might be understood to argue their reality. Light, shifting and immaterial, is unreal because it never reaches stasis. Yet Bronk argues that this changeability and refusal of definition are precisely what makes light matter, while “objects are nothing.” Objects are nothing because, in their stasis, they can tell us nothing. They can only exist, and represent themselves as they are; objects cannot mean. Light, on the other hand, shifts, changes position, and therefore creates meaning. Light uses objects, and reveals them to us so that they appear to change, and to mean, or matter. Yet the objects are inactive in this production of meaning. They only exist in order to provide the light with a medium in which it can be understood.
Upon listening to Bronk’s reading of his poem, a similar argument forms regarding voice and language. Bronk’s words present themselves to us, and they certainly signify, but they perhaps only signify themselves. An object- a chair, to use our well-worn example- can also be understood as signifying itself. The word “chair” represents a chair. A chair is a chair, but being can be understood as a mode of representation. A chair does represent a chair, even if only in the most banal way. Words, like objects, then, only represent. Bronk’s words clearly combine to represent ideas far more intricate than the idea of a chair, yet they are still representing the idea. In his reading, Bronk’s voice acts upon his words as the light acts upon the objects. The energy in Bronk’s voice increases when the word “light” crosses his lips, he strings together to similar sounds of “trivial” and “trees,” and swallows the phrases about objects, drowning them in the assertions about light. As a particular shade of light reveals one form of a room’s existence, Bronk’s specific emphases reveal one form of the poem’s existence, allowing it to matter, rather than represent. So sound revives text from its deadened representation, gives it tone, and grants it the ability to mean. Yet Bronk goes further, and asserts that not only does light give objects meaning, but the objects exist only to see the light. Text, then, exists to hear sound, but particularly, to hear the voice, a visceral expression of human beings, whose meanings and layers we do not quite understand. When a voice speaks a word, we can use the way in which the word is spoken to understand the voice, just as we can use the way in which light falls on an object to understand how light functions.