Classic and Contemporary Poetry
ON NOT SAYING EVERYTHING, by CECIL DAY LEWIS Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: This tree outside my window here Last Line: From the not saying anything Alternate Author Name(s): Blake, Nicolas Subject(s): Love; Poetry & Poets | ||||||||
This tree outside my window here, Naked, umbrageous, fresh or sere, Has neither chance nor will to be Anything but a linden tree, Even if its branches grew to span The continent; for nature's plan Insists that infinite extension Shall create no new dimension. From the first snuggling of the seed In earth, a branchy form's decreed. Unwritten poems loom as if They'd cover the whole of earthly life. But each one, growing, learns to trim its Impulse and meaning to the limits Roughed out by me, then modified In its own truth's expanding light. A poem, setting to its form, Finds there's no jailer, but a norm Of conduct, and a fitting sphere Which stops it wandering everywhere. As for you, my love, it's harder, Though neither prisoner nor warder, Not to desire you both: for love Illudes us we can lightly move Into a new dimension, where The bounds of being disappear And we make one impassioned cell. So wanting to be all in all Each for each, a man and a woman Defy the limits of what's human. Your glancing eyes, your animal tongue, Your hands that flew to mine and clung Like birds on bough, with innocence Masking those young experiments Of flesh, persuaded me that nature Formed us each other's god and creature. Play out then, as it should be played, The sweet illusion that has made An eldorado of your hair And our love an everywhere. But when we cease to play explorers And become settlers, clear before us Lies the next need-to re-define The boundary between yours and mine; Else, one stays prisoner, one goes free. Each to his own identity Grown back, shall prove our love's expression Purer for this limitation. Love's essence, like a poem's, shall spring From the not saying everything. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ENVY OF OTHER PEOPLE'S POEMS by ROBERT HASS THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AS A SONG by ROBERT HASS THE FATALIST: TIME IS FILLED by LYN HEJINIAN OXOTA: A SHORT RUSSIAN NOVEL: CHAPTER 192 by LYN HEJINIAN LET ME TELL YOU WHAT A POEM BRINGS by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA JUNE JOURNALS 6/25/88 by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA FOLLOW ROZEWICZ by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA HAVING INTENDED TO MERELY PICK ON AN OIL COMPANY, THE POEM GOES AWRY by HICOK. BOB |
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