Saturday, June 8, 2013

Shadows


Shadows cast by the street light
            under the stars,
                        the head is tilted back,
the long shadow of the legs
            presumes a world
                        taken for granted
on which the cricket trills.
            The hollows of the eyes
                        Are unpeopled.
Right and left
            climb the ladders of night
                        as dawn races
to put our the stars.
That
                        Is the poetic figure
But we know
            better: what is not now
                        will never
be.  Sleep secure,
            the little dog in the snapshot
                        keeps his shrewd eyes
pared.  Memory
            is liver than sight.
                        A man
looking out,
            seeing shadows—
                        it is himself
that can be painlessly amputated
            by a mere shifting
                        of the stars.
A comfort so easily not to be
            and to be at once one
                        with every man.
The night blossoms
            with a thousand shadows
                        so long
as there are stars,
            street lights
                        or a moon and
who shall say
            by their shadows
which is different
            from the other
                        fat or lean.

                        II

Ripped from the concept of our lives
            and from all concept
                        somehow, and plainly,
the sun will come up
            each morning
                        and sink again.
So that we experience
            Violently
                        every day
two worlds
            one of which we share with the
            rose in bloom
                        and one,
by far the greater,
            with the past,
                        the world of memory,
the silly world of history,
            the world
                        of the imagination.

Which leaves only the beasts and trees,
            crystals
                        with their refractive
                        surfaces
and rotting things
            to stir our wonder.

                        Save for the little
central hole
            of the eye itself
                        into which
we dare not stare too hard
            or we are lost.

                        The instant
trivial as it is
            is all we have
                        unless—unless
things the imagination feeds upon,
            the scent of the rose,
                        startle us anew.

By:  William Carlos Williams
Copied, pasted and loved by:  Homeless with a Laptop, That is my Name

No comments:

Post a Comment