Every view, at last
has been slowed to such
a dramatic impasse—
the quiescent dew on the grass
in the morning,
the rubicund plumage
of the evening sun,
and the obsidian silence
of motionless night—
are sober still-life paintings now,
spaced out and hung
along the walls of my apartment.
Every so often, I might
walk up and study each canvas
by the weak lamps of the past,
struggling to recall
the calm forces
that once animated them,
to explain to someone who's not present
the chiseled deliberateness
of their composition,
to prevent my own
lucidity from drying out, chipping
and fading to gray.
