4653

                                                       . . . how hard
it is, to apprehend something so large
in scale and yet so minutely detailed.
Like trying to familiarize yourself,
exactly, with the side of a mountain:
this birch, this rock-pool, this square mosaic
yard of tesserated leaves, autumnal,
a jeweled reliquary. Trying to see
each element of the mountain and then
through them, the whole, since music is only
given to us in time, each phrase parcelled
out, in time.

-- Mark Doty, lines from "Grosse Fuge" Atlantis

Atlantis

5341

LXXXII

How to reach into your innermost fragility? Screens drop down very
quickly     Inside there is a glimpse of a swallow's wing
I follow the eye of pain, straight into pain's crystal


I shall approach the colorlessness of nothing, its color
I shall do so with joy, as if approaching
your face     I saw you move, saw the grace of your body
You're illuminated from within     The movements of your limbs
You're about to explain something that deeply moves you, that makes
                                                                                           use of your love
I look at you from the far side of everything     Even from there
                                                                                       I can walk


What is it that shall break through the first integration?


The face has no end     We move toward the face of infinity
The face bears its deep transparency, its pulsating resistance,
until we both come, arriving in a single cry . . .

-- Göran Sonnevi, from Mozart's Third Brain
Tr. Rika Lesser

More from Mozart's Third Brain (link)

8838

Underneath the water, or inside it, is a dark grey flame:

I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
you wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.

-- Elizabeth Bishop, lines from "At the Fishhouses"

At the Fishhouses (poem and commentary by George Szirtes) (link)

untitled

The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;
I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,
With the earth and the sky and the water, remade, like a casket of gold
For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

-- W.B. Yeats, lines from "The Lover Tells of the Rose in His Heart"

4806

These are then two arts which enclose man in man; or, rather, which enclose the being in its work, and the soul in its acts and in the production of its acts, as our former body was entirely encased in the creations of its eye, and surrounded with sight. By means of two arts it wraps itself up, in two different ways, in their inner laws and wills, which are figured forth in one material or another, stone or air.

-- Paul Valéry Eupolinos
Tr. Denise Folliot

5206

Swimming through the oval, saucer-like reflections, dipping and flashing on the sea surface, one traced the colors back to the origins of those reflections. Some came directly from the sky and different colored clouds, some from the golden greens of the vegetation growing on the cliffs, some from the red-orange of the seaweed on the blues and violets of the adjacent rocks, and, all between, the actual hues of the water, according to its various depths and over what it was passing. The entire elusive, unstable, flicking complex subject to the changing qualities of the light itself . . . it was as though one was swimming through a diamond.

-- Bridget Riley The Eye's Mind

Bridget Riley (link)

4465

the line

How are you, Robert?  BRIGHTER     STILL EARTHBOUND
I ASK :  NO ACCIDENT? & GET WHITE SOUND
A BLUR EACH MOMENT CLOSER TO SOME CLEAR
SONG OF BLISS :  ONE OF THE MARVELS HERE.
ANOTHER IS TO TALK TO THAT WORD'S NAMESAKE.
Andrew? THE VERY SAME     DO I CALL HIM ANDY?
I called you Andrew in "The Summer People".
AH THEN I CAN PRACTISE IN THE GLASS
What does he say in Heaven? Can you quote?
The cup, with a mimed clearing of its throat,
Enunciates :  'WHAT'S WRONG WITH EMPIRES PRAY?
GREATLY BENEFICIAL. FOR THE SUBJECTED,
DELICIOUS SUBJUGATION & FOR THE RULERS,
TERRIBLE FEARS OF LOSING, BALANCED BY
RARE OPPORTUNITIES FOR BEASTLINESS'
Anything about poetry? EVERYTHING!
I DRINK IT IN :  'THE LINE, MY DEAR NEW FRIEND,
THE LINE! LET IT RUN TAUT & FLEXIBLE
BETWEEN THE TWO POLES OF RHYTHM & RHYME,
& WHAT YOU HANG ON IT MAY BE AS DULL
OR AS PROVOCATIVE AS LAUNDRY.' How does
New work get round in Heaven? WE ADEPT READERS
MERELY CALL TO MIND THE MOLECULAR PAGE
PLUS A LIVING KNOWN OR UNKNOWN AUTHOR
& THINK 'NEW POEM PLEASE'     & PRESTO ! EITHER
SOME SHAGGY DOGGEREL FROM THE COAST APPEARS
OR A SPARKLER FROM ACADEME. SAME PRINCIPLE
EXACTLY WHEREBY WE POP UP WITHIN YR
FIELD OF REFLECTION AS U THINK OF US
THEN FLASH BACK TO OUR BLIND WORK IN THE VOID
WHEN YR ATTENTION DIES

-- James Merrill, from The Changing Light at Sandover

About The Changing Light at Sandover (link)