<p>422. RESTORATION
<a l:href="#c_451"><sup>{*}</sup></a></p>To think that any fool may tearby chance the web of when and where.O window in the dark! To thinkthat every brain is on the brinkof nameless bliss no brain can bear,unless there be no great surprise —as when you learn to levitateand, hardly trying, realize— alone, in a bright room — that weightis but your shadow, and you rise.My little daughter wakes in tears:She fancies that her bed is drawninto a dimness which appearsto be the deep of all her fearsbut which, in point of fact, is dawn.I know a poet who can stripa William Tell or Golden Pipin one uninterrupted peelmiraculously to reveal,revolving on his fingertip,a snowball. So I would unrobe,turn inside out, pry open, probeall matter, everything you see,the skyline and its saddest tree,the whole inexplicable globe,to find the true, the ardent coreas doctors of old pictures dowhen, rubbing our a distant dooror sooty curtain, they restorethe jewel of a bluish view.9 марта 1952<p>423. THE POPLAR
<a l:href="#c_452"><sup>{*}</sup></a></p>Before this house a poplar growsWell versed in dowsing, I suppose,But how it sighs! And every nightA boy in black, a girl in whiteBeyond the brightness of my bedAppear, and not a word is said.On coated chair and coatless chairThey sit, one here, the other there.I do not care to make a scene:I read a glossy magazine.He props upon his slender kneeA dwarfed and potted poplar tree.And she — she seems to hold a dimHand mirror with an ivory rimFraming a lawn, and her, and meUnder the prototypic tree,Before a pillared porch, last seenIn July, nineteen seventeen.This is the silver lining ofPathetic fallacies: the soughOf
Populusthat taps at lastNot water but the author's past.And note: nothing is ever said.I read a magazine in bedOr the
Home Book of Verse;and note:This is my shirt, that is my coat.But frailer seers I am toldGet up to rearrange a fold.1952
