Time and the Garden
by Yvor Winters
The spring has darkened with activity.
The future gathers in vine, bush, and tree:
Persimmon, walnut, loquat, fig, and grape,
Degrees and kinds of color, taste, and shape.
These will advance in their due series, space
The season like a tranquil dwelling-place.
And yet excitement swells me, vein by vein:
I long to crowd the little garden, gain
Its sweetness in my hand and crush it small
And taste it in a moment, time and all!
These trees, whose slow growth measures off my years,
I would expand to greatness. No one hears,
And I am still retarded in duress!
And this is like that other restlessness
To seize the greatness not yet fairly earned,
One which the tougher poets have discerned --
Gascoigne, Ben Jonson, Greville, Raleigh, Donne,
Poets who wrote great poems, one by one,
And spaced by many years, each line an act
Through which few labor, which no men retract.
This passion is the scholar's heritage,
The imposition of a busy age,
The passion to condense from book to book
Unbroken wisdom in a single look,
Though we know well that when this fix the head,
The mind's immortal, but the man is dead.
Bludgeoning Myself with Metaphor
-
Reset Seventeen, Day Sixteen
No nap Wednesday evening, because I slept the middle of the day away and got up at half past two. I might actually get to sleep before five o'clock…
-
Reset Seventeen, Day Fifteen
Once again I've forgotten when I went to sleep, but I woke up around two o'clock in the morning. Tuesday was quite warm, and I kept the windows open…
-
Reset Seventeen, Day Fourteen
I don't recall the exact hour, but it was well before midnight Monday, when I felt the sudden need for a nap. I expected it to last until perhaps two…
- Post a new comment
- 0 comments
- Post a new comment
- 0 comments