I. The Constant Disquisition of the Wind
The sky seemed so small that winter day,
A dirty light on a lifeless world,
Contracted like a withered stick.
It was not the shadow of cloud and cold,
But a sense of the distance of the sun—
The shadow of a sense of his own,
A knowledge that the actual day
Was so much less. Only the wind
Seemed large and loud and high and strong.
And as he thought within the thought
Of the wind, not knowing that that thought
Was not his thought, nor anyone’s,
The appropriate image of himself,
So formed, became himself and he breathed
The breath of another nature as his own,
But only its momentary breath,
Outside of and beyond the dirty light,
That never could be animal,
A nature still without a shape,
Except his own—perhaps, his own
In a Sunday’s violent idleness.
II. The World Is Larger in Summer
He left half a shoulder and half a head
To recognize him in after time.
These marbles lay weathering in the grass
When the summer was over, when the change
Of summer and of the sun, the life
Of summer and of the sun, were gone.
He had said that everything possessed
The power to transform itself, or else,
And what meant more, to be transformed.
He discovered the colors of the moon
In a single spruce, when, suddenly,
The tree stood dazzling in the air
And blue broke on him from the sun,
A bullioned blue, a blue abulge,
Like daylight, with time’s bellishings,
And sensuous summer stood full-height.
The master of the spruce, himself,
Became transformed. But his mastery
Left only the fragments found in the grass,
From his project, as finally magnified.