light's fading blue-
violet trickle—every single
stem of shadow in the
street seemed
to thicken,
to grip hard
and deepen—and at once,
he noticed—
color
giving way to plain
giving way to plain
and undiluted
form,
and then suddenly,
and then suddenly,
nature became bewildering—
consisting, to
him, of everything
he could no longer
write about;
because it all looked
indefensible—
without any cunning,
or artifice,
or tricks—and if
it still told any
stories, it told them
now only
now only
as a tree
tells its leaves:
as plain
and authentic means,
and authentic means,
and never
as ends.
as ends.
Although—he protested
alone
to the creeping dark—
had not Art?
become just such
an instinct for him too?
But blind
and indiscriminately—as those
shadows' slow
and sure dominion
of the pavement,
he already
knew—that wherever they grew,
those instincts
of his
were all quite intricate;
earthy, perhaps,
but definitely
rooted—in study.
