(no subject)
Yes, a day is merely forever
In memory’s shiningness,
And a year but a gust or a gasp
In the summer’s dying heat of Time, and in that last summer
I was almost ready to learn
What imagination is-it is only
The lie we must learn to live by, if ever
We mean to live at all…
The salt air of sea, and the only sound to our ears
Was the slap and hiss far below, for the sea has never forgiven
The nature of stone...
All is in vain unless you can, motionless, standing there,
Breathe with the rhythm of stars.
You cannot, of course, see your own face, but you know that it,
Lifted, is stripped to white bone by starlight. This is happening.
This is happiness.
--Robert Penn Warren, from Now and Then