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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE EXISTING POOL, by HAYDEN CARRUTH Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Begin with a pool. The deepening Last Line: Gather together Subject(s): Water | |||
Begin with a pool. The deepening bed of a mountain brook will do, where swift water quietens. Ours is the Sheep Hole where years ago, before the sheep and their herdsmen all went west, the flocks were driven each springtime for a good dunk before they were shorn. It lies below the Shinglemill Bridge where a wheel once took the fall at the pool's brim to drive sawblades for shingles years ago before the cedars were exterminated. But any pool will do. Let it be clear, quiet, and if, like ours, it is guarded by yellow birches and elms whose overleaning branches darken the surface near the edge leaving the center clear, so much the better. Look now, lean closer, see down to the brook-bed, the pebbles there, mosaic of intricate antique, green, gray, red, and then above them, between you and the water like a window or like another eye encompassing your eyes, the gleaming reflected sky. How this light clings to the surface! A triumph, so tactile you could peel it or turn it like a page, and yet what is it? The pebbles below, green, gray, red, gleam as before. Throw two more pebbles -- left, right. Ripples shake the light and reflections dance like new mosaic dappling above the fixed mosaic beneath, or like thought dancing upon the face of reality. Poof, a poor figure with neither originality nor grace, and the others too, these inventions of yours, guardian trees, mosaics, windows, dancing -- all absent. Reality and unreality are your ways of looking into the pool for the pool has neither. The pool "has" nothing at all. Some of you make your looking into marks on a page and call it an object, but see, it is absent, a memory, perhaps a premonition, and if it have beauty or meaning, so will the cedars not growing in our woods. A long time I have looked in the pool. The surface is placid again. It has gathered together, unformed, the light that shines above the pebbles. It will always gather together. 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...STARS WHICH SEE, STARS WHICH DO NOT SEE by MARVIN BELL WASHING OUR HANDS OF THE REST OF AMERICA by MARVIN BELL WATER, WINTER, FIRE by MARVIN BELL I'VE NEVER SEEN SUCH A REAL HARD TIME BEFORE' by HAYDEN CARRUTH THE WORLD AS WILL AND REPRESENTATION' by HAYDEN CARRUTH A POST-IMPRESSIONIST SUSURRATION FOR THE FIRST OF NOVEMBER by HAYDEN CARRUTH |
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