Mine is winter's mind, and winds
Breathe over me. I watch the rock
Disfigure in the snow.
The figures of the sky
When the light air moves
The sun
To their imperfect pitch
Transfix me; then I know
The earth's still brood -- but a rustle
Quickens and a hare
Leaps from the drift,
Shaking loose the limbs of trees
And digging up
Old leaves.

Tantalos

It is a dark place, and they have not felt the heat of the fire
Who dwell in that waste, where the rain never ceases
To drip and the only light is the lightning's blue. Follow,
Heart, since you request from me the fate of a man
Who did not begrudge the gods his only son:
He honored them with a sumptuous banquet,
Tender flesh, and even Demeter
Was pleased. But his well-beloved daughter
Would not be surpassed: to Leto she offered
Her labor's last fruits.

McTaggart #2

First learn the nature
Not of things in time,
But time itself, in which partaking,
If indeed they do partake,
Those things that creep will creep
And all that rotates turns,
By which the spheres
Fall towards each other and again
Are forced away,
Since every motion is a change,
And each change asks of time
Its possibility, so if eternal time
Remains unborn then nothing moves.

An old man casts a net
Into the sterile sea
In expectation of bright livelihood. Watch:
Hand over hand he tugs the hemp,
Then lifts it overhead and casts. So time is pulled
From what will be into the present
Moment, then goes slack
And sinks into the past -- we say this is the first
Of twin series, call it A: each moment
If any moment ever was
Is now or will be or has been.

In the east the rosy sun
Arises, scattering the night,
And courses on towards noon, descends
From sight. Along this latitude
Each longitude is marked
From east to west: to its neighbor's left
Or on the right each point must rest.
Thus the second series we call B
Gives time's chronology, for each event
Must follow on the last,
Regardless if it's future, present now,
Or past.

McTaggart #1

In time you will come to understand that time itself
Is less than real, and no possession of those things
That truly are. But how can everything in motion
Be false, and mere appearances?
What is their motion? -- deep magma
Oozes from a crevice in the rock, water tumbles
Down the sheer, and even light foam,
Set upon by air, subsides,
And then its bubble bursts --
What is this tumbling burst, or
How explain the ooze, if not
An immaterial stream,
In which is everywhere displaced, dispersed
Material being?

Hymn

To progeny of Leto and the god who once
Donned wings to staunch his wound,
Rejoice! Concealer of springs,
You made the monster melt, who inspire
True words upon your seer (to her
Your knowledge is a revelry) -- and Niobe
Hardly dares deny that when you shoot
The tip will not demure.

Tangle

Two series make the future and the past, the present ties their knot
Into a tangle of precessions and accessions, passing on from what was not
To things which will no longer be. Memory hides the light
Of present life, though apprehension tries to peek
Behind the veil, apprehension who though swift
Is blind (but may yet prove a seer).

Ratio

If nothing sings is that a reason to forsake
My word, as it is possessed
Of clover, saplings? -- Blood still dissipates the veins
Even if it is pebbles, even if it is rock
And their is no shame in saying the truth.

What I say must be a part of that
To which and in which it is said: the dark
Minerals for example and their sound.

But this is not a song --
Anymore than when the air moves what is green
Or the unwed shows herself
Herself in what is clear. Or

If someone harvests something in tight intervals?

The truth is that what I can devise has been devised --
And so to witness this device is my device:
I must describe.

Know Thyself

The world was always there,
Only I'd forgotten it, or
Rather, not forgotten it,
But only become part of it,
And in becoming part had lost the whole.

The light must come from the window,
Even though the curtains
Gauze it to the right and from the left
Drape the naked sky. The shorter of the two,
The one with the unkempt beard
Is watching what must be the setting sun
Throw his light into the wall;
It dribbles to the floor. The other, posed,
Regards the frame – really I suppose
The subject of their double gaze, even if
The corners of the first one's eyes
Appear to intersect the glass.
The tall one leaning on the mount
Makes three; he studies on their study.
A staircase to their left
Supports the glance of separating friends:
White collar, sweater, and brown slacks,
The black, the pointed shoes, and bundled coat,
Two feet unevenly ascending and the head
He's tilted up. Further a red chair, facing front
A sofa draped in white supports
A couple nudes, both dark
And light, and several paintings, too.

Almost looking like a photograph
Because of how the light
Slants into the room, because the gray
Is so white and the blue –
What else can paint do?