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The wholeness, the transfigured body of these poems, is a return to the simplest human experiences of seeing and breathing, beyond thought: the immense, vibrant, dangerous world that every child lives in. Though it is transcendence, it leaves nothing behind. It is pure precisely because it goes nowhere.
Yet were, when playing by ourselves, enchanted with what alone endures; and we would stand there in the infinite, blissful space between world and toy, at a point which, from the earliest beginning, had been established for a pure event.
Perhaps we are here in order to say: house, bridge, fountain, gate, pitcher, fruit-tree, window— at most: column, tower.… But to say them, you must understand, oh to say them more intensely than the Things themselves ever dreamed of existing. Isn’t the secret intent of this taciturn earth, when it forces lovers together, that inside their boundless emotion all things may shudder with joy?
XIII Plump apple, smooth banana, melon, peach, gooseberry … How all this affluence speaks death and life into the mouth … I sense … Observe it from a child’s transparent features while he tastes. This comes from far away. What miracle is happening in your mouth? Instead of words, discoveries flow out from the ripe flesh, astonished to be free. Dare to say what “apple” truly is. This sweetness that feels thick, dark, dense at first; then, exquisitely lifted in your taste, grows clarified, awake and luminous, double-meaninged, sunny, earthy, real—: Oh knowledge, pleasure—inexhaustible.
VIII] We have overheard fountains all our days. They sound to us almost like time. But much more closely do they keep pace with eternity’s subtle rhythm.
