poetry
is a satisfying
of the desire for resemblance
its singularity
is that in satisfying
the desire for resemblance
it touches the sense of reality
enhances heightens intensifies it
and when the similarity
is between things of adequate dignity
the resemblance transfigures:
the brilliance of earth
is the brilliance of every paradise
*
you the poet
your subject
is a sense of the world
inevitable & inexhaustible—
departing from it
you become artificial and laborious
even though the artifice be skilful
and the labour perceptive
you write about twilight
because you shrink from the noonday
you write about the country
because you dislike the city
there are stresses you invite;
there are stresses you avoid
a flat landscape extending
in all directions to immense distances
placates you but you shrug shoulders
at mountains
the measure of you
is the measure of your sense of the world
if you touch triangle or cymbal
it is because you feel like it
your image restates its subject
in terms of strident attitude
an image is an intervention
on the part of the image-maker
take the case of a man
for whom reality is enough
as at the end of his life
he returns to it like one
returning from Nowhere to his village;
to everything there tangible
& visible—a clarified reality
but an analogue of happiness
or unhappiness of innocence
or tragedy thoughtlessness
or heaviness of mind
transcendent analogue
composed of the particulars of reality
created by his sense of the world
*
the inverted effect
of soliloquies in hell
and of most celestial poems
and of all music played
on the terraces of the audiences
of the moon produces
an agreement with reality
the creation of a truth
not from the gaunt world
of the reason but from
a radiant productive atmosphere
which is the morality
of right sensation
*
elevation & elation
on the part of the poet—
not so much that as
an incandescence of the intelligence
a triumph over the incredible
the more destitute the absolute fact
becomes the more it begins to be precious
the more it includes everything
the imagination includes
if you close your eyes and think
of a place where it would be pleasant
to spend a holiday and let appear
a rock that sparkles a blue sea
that lashes and hemlocks in which
the sun can merely fumble—this alone
demonstrates (since rock sea wood
& sun are familiar facts)
that the world of fact
is the equivalent of the world of
imagination because it looks like it;
the visible is the equivalent
of the invisible I am myself
a part of what is real it is
my own speech and the strength of it
this only that I hear or ever shall hear
true imagination colours increases
brings to a beginning and an end
invents languages crushes men
& gods in its hands says to women
more than it is possible to say
rescues all of us from what we call
absolute fact and ensures that
the garden fountain always plays
the song of one who can say
I am imagination in a leaden time
and in a world that does not move
for the weight of its own weariness
when we look at the blue sky
for the very first time not merely
to see it but to look & experience it
we live in the centre of a physical poetry
a geography intolerable except for
non-geography—we look at
the world of our own thoughts
and of our own feelings
when we look into eyes
for the very first time not merely
to see but to look into the soul
we live in the centre of huge bliss
with special illumination
special abundance and severity
of abundance virtue in the midst
of indulgence order in disorder
Bravo!
maestro of fireflies.
beneath the Milky Way
dreaming of lily pads
falling through a crescent Jupiter
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