But of course the poem is not an assertion. Do you see? When I wrote That all my poems over the long years before I met you made you come true, And that the poems for you since then have made you in yourself become more true, I did not mean that the poems created or invented you. How many have foundered In that sargasso! No, what I have been trying to say Is that neither of the quaint immemorial views of poetry is adequate for us. A poem is not an expression, nor is it an object. Yet it somewhat partakes of both. What a poem is Is never to be known, for which I have learned to be grateful. But the aspect in which I see my own Is as the act of love. The poem is a gift, a bestowal. The poem is for us what instinct is for animals, a continuing and chiefly unthought corroboration of essence (Though thought, ours and the animals', is still useful). Why otherwise is the earliest always the most important, the formative? The Iliad, the Odyssey, the Book of Genesis, These were acts of love, I mean deeply felt gestures, which continuously bestow upon us What we are. And if I do not know which poem of mine Was my earliest gift to you, Except that it had to have been written about someone else, Nevertheless it was the gesture accruing value to you, your essence, while you were still a child, and thereafter Across all these years. And see how much Has come from that first sonnet after our loving began, the one That was a kiss, a gift, a bestowal. This is the paradigm of fecundity. I think the poem is not Transparent, as some have said, nor a looking-glass, as some have also said, Yet it has almost the quality of disappearance In its cage of visibility. It disperses among the words. It is a fluidity, a vapor, of love. This, the instinctual, is what caused me to write "Do you see?" instead of "Don't you see?" in the first line Of this poem, this loving treatise, which is what gives away the poem And gives it all to you. 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...A BOOK OF AIRS: SONG 6. CORRINA by THOMAS CAMPION CRITICS AND CONNOISSEURS by MARIANNE MOORE A MORTIFYING MISTAKE by ANNA MARIA PRATT THE FLIGHT OF THE GEESE by CHARLES GEORGE DOUGLAS ROBERTS LOST ART by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH EPISTLE TO WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, ESQ. .. BILL ABOLISHING SLAVE TRADE by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD |