1446

It is where we reside without holding a place

In eyes or voice

With inward face to a pattern wed,

A mere standard of breath,

Indifferent animal, to be

Unwrought by the furniture of complexity.

Desire surcease

Is a house aslant of angles

Knowing.

Out of memory is the foundation bent:

Of new faults to the splintered roots

A signature make,

And crescent of a bending.

1445

1444

1443

1442

1441

1440

The square root of minus one

Upon the flecked blue grass

As if the leaves had wings to angle

Their yellow selves along the unreal axis.

By the autumn tree our terminus we wonder

At the once-green:

The jetsam of chance,

Or fine vortical solution?

No: it is the freemasonry of the unthinking,

With sister truth arrayed,

Beyond an art's arraignment;

What beauty's beheld in this field

Needs no beholder.

1439

1438

1437

1436

1435

1434

1433

1432

Can you distill the time,

To make pale hours a dark

Moment's condensation?

It would of brevity taste,

Brief pain, brief desire;

For the body makes its own liquor,

From the lightest touch a depth,

But years are slighter than a day

And want this still to hold them:

Time as hapless ends as it beginning tends

To suddenness and fury.

1431

1430

1429

1428

1427

1426

1425

1424

1423

1422

Tiny human figures frozen

Is the distance between

The sun on my face and the sun:

Small concerns lit by smaller still,

What is is not what's seen.

The wave of local gravity's

Misproportioned to its wider scend:

What was is larger now,

Umbra, penumbra, present light.

A frieze of stone or painted cave

Breathed once

Wherever you stand, observer, observed.

1421

1420

1419

1418