Were we to have invested in a figure more distant, whiter cities, blacker tides, bluer moons? to have swum at night as if it were an insufferable day of shade? Next year gone, missing, and the sea that damp paper at the extreme. One hears of eternity rather than remembers. Like anyone taken by emotion and chance, the lace and the ice mountains, we watched the filings from the night stars razor-part the foam from the water. Full moons, high wind, nothing apart from imagining, a world reduced to a vineyard beside a cloudy pool. Tired of flinging our arms back, our faces forward. Tired of the dive, the save, the pure form of the verb purpling the hotel where we collapsed the language of charity, the final minutes of verse. After an instant of fulfillment, where's God? Experience pressed us like a grape. After forgiveness, we see the earth divided because the screen in our bedroom shields the rays; now I see your face in profile (geometry), your hair in a towel (allegory), your lips pressed to mine (surface). There was a fiery scrub, and we were to have survived it, the worst of which is the bomb blanket. As for the light that spills off God's glance, careful records, faithful studies... A peach blushes in bright sunlight, it must be morning. This is the day fondling the moon's reflection on the water, tossing it, smoothing its hair, babying it. Are we to invest in a figure more distant, blacker moons, whiter waters? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...WILLOW POEM by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS THE GLOW-WORM by WILLIAM WORDSWORTH WHY DRINK WINE by HENRY ALDRICH TWELVE SONNETS: 10. THY WHITENESS by GEORGE BARLOW (1847-1913) TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. A LANCASHIRE MILL-HAND by EDWARD CARPENTER |