In everything I seek to
The fundamental:
The daily choice, the daily task,
The sentimental.
To plumb the essence of the past,
The first foundations,
The crux, the roots, the inmost hearts,
The explanations.
And, puzzling out the weave of fate,
Events observer,
To live, feel, love and
And to discover.
Oh, if my skill did but
After a fashion,
In eight lines I'd
The parts of passion.
I'd write of sins, forbidden fruit,
Of chance-seized shadows;
Of hasty flight and hot pursuit,
Of palms, of elbows.
Define its laws and
In terms judicial,
Repeat the names it glories in,
And the initials.
I'd sinews strain my verse to
Like a trim garden:
The limes should blossom down the nape,
A double cordon.
My verse should breathe the fresh-clipped hedge,
Roses and
And mint and new-mown hay and sedge,
The thunder's bellows.
As Chopin once in his
Miraculously
Parks, groves, graves and solitudes-A living wonder.
The moment of achievement
Twixt sport and torment…A singing bowstring shuddering taut,
A stubborn bow bent.
