Blue Sonata
from Houseboat Days (1977)
Long ago was the then beginning to seem like now As now is but the setting out on a new but still Undefined way. That now, the one once Seen from far away, is our destiny No matter what else may happen to us. It is The present past of which our features, Our opinions are made. We are half it and we Care nothing about the rest of it. We Can see far enough ahead for the rest of us to be Implicit in the surroundings that twilight is. We know that this part of the day comes every day And we feel that, as it has its rights, so We have our right to be ourselves in the measure That we are in it and not some other day, or in Some other place. The time suits us Just as it fancies itself, but just so far As we not give up that inch, breath Of becoming before becoming may be seen, Or come to seem all that it seems to mean now. The things that were coming to be talked about Have come and gone and are still remembered As being recent. There is a grain of curiosity At the base of some new thing, that unrolls In a question mark like a new wave on the shore. In coming to give, to give up what we had, We have, we understand, gained or been gained By what was passing through, bright with the sheen Of things recently forgotten and revived. Each image fits into place, with the calm Of not having too many, of having just enough. We live in the sigh of our present. If that was all there was to have We could re-imagine the other half, deducing it From the shape of what is seen, thus Being inserted into its idea of how we Ought to proceed. It would be tragic to fit Into the space created by our not having arrived yet, To utter the speech that belongs there, For progress occurs through re-inventing These words from a dim recollection of them, In violating that space in such a way as To leave it intact. Yet we do after all Belong here, and have moved a considerable Distance; our passing is a façade. But our understanding of it is justified.