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
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