Rigidity nonlife the meaning neither of life nor of unlife neither a presence nor an absence but the snowworld the compacted snow and ice so powerful that the granite formed in the nuclear sun clicks like the dice in a crapshooter's hand and shatters a white incumbency white being the color of hardness as in the unusual power of iridium a lithic ideal gripping the forest in petrifaction bringing the encompassing the silence the sidereal frost not just an antisound but a singing of nothing a reciting of nevertobeborn until whether near or remote auspicious or menacing the water by drop by drop by drop begins to fall. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO A POET, WHO WOULD HAVE ME PRAISE CERTAIN BAD POETS, IMITATORS ... by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS THE PROGRESS OF POETRY by JONATHAN SWIFT DANSE RUSSE by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS TO ONE WHO ASKED by KENNETH SLADE ALLING WAR AUTOBIOGRAPHY; WRITTEN IN ILLNESS by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN |