“What years of weather did to branch and bough
No canopy of shadow covers now,
And these great trunks, where the wind's rough and bleak,
Though little shaken, can be heard to creak.
It is not time, as yet, for rising sap
And hammered spiles. There's nothing there to tap.
For now, the long blue shadows of these trees
Stretch out upon the snow, and are at ease.”
“I was just writing a letter to a friend this morning and remembered how Aristotle says that the essential poetic gift is for metaphor. And if that's the essential poetic gift, then a kind of impatient abstraction that rises above this world and its things is not the essential poetic move.”
“And here we are, who hold each other now
So nearly, that our welded shadows seem,
There where they fall away, a ghostly prow
Steering into the stream.
As if to kiss were someway to embark;
As if to love were partly to be spent,
And send of us a hostage to the dark.
If so, I am content . . .”
