on the road home

 

.

It was when I said,

“There is no such thing as the truth,”

That the grapes seemed fatter.

The fox ran out of his hole.

You….You said,

“There are many truths,

But they are not parts of a truth.” 

Then the tree, at night, began to change,

Smoking through green and smoking blue.

We were two figures in a wood.

We said we stood alone.

It was when I said,

“Words are not forms of a single word.

In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts.

The world must be measured by eye.”

It was when you said,

“The idols have seen lots of poverty,

Snakes and gold and lice,

But not the truth;”

It was at that time, that the silence was largest,

And longest, the night was roundest.

The fragrance of the autumn warmest,

Closest, and strongest.

—Wallace Stevens

 .

virtue

.

largerloves

.

before the names

 

.

I dream of the silence
the day before Adam came
to name the animals,

The gold skins newly dropped
from God's bright fingers, still
implicit with the light. 

A day like this, perhaps:
a winter whiteness
haunting the creation,

as we are sometimes
haunted by the space
we fill, or by the forms

we might have known
before the names,
beyond the gloss of things.

—John Burnside

.

 

white fox image