and the single reality of the closely lined buildings, casa after casa, reflected, like a young man's convictions (shaky, upside-down, blurred, like yellow-and-white flesh, are somehow steady and understood, sure as the hand of a housekeeper who has been with the family for nearly a century) is a reality uncelebrated except in bad photographs by determined tourists. That's how important the long dark point of this simplicity is. Is there progress? Do you mean, uh, toward recognition? Yes, eyes about to open to the occasion, and it is bending with the wind, where everything suddenly might be seen, as it breaks with a snap, and the joy of it, transformed as understanding, stays on clearly centered and smelling like sap from a young branch. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...PINE-TREES AND THE SKY: EVENING by RUPERT BROOKE MEETING AT NIGHT by ROBERT BROWNING THE COMPLAINT OF CHAUCER TO HIS EMPTY PURSE by GEOFFREY CHAUCER FIDELIS by ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER A CHILD'S GRAVE by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH A CHRISTMAS CAMP ON THE SAN GABR'EL by AMELIA EDITH HUDDLESTON BARR TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 3. O THOU WHOSE FORM by EDWARD CARPENTER |