Thursday, April 23, 2015


99.

And the threshold, here, is the welcoming threshold,
 the threshold that does not impose by its majesty.  
The two images: the calm nest and the old house, 
weave on the loom of dreams the thick web of intimacy.  

And the images are entirely simple, with no concern 
for the picturesque.  The poet has rightly felt that a sort 
of musical harmony would take hold in the soul 
of his reader by the evocation of the nest, of birdsong, 

of the charms that remind us of the old house, the primary dwelling.  
But by so gently comparing house and nest, have we not forgotten 
the house of happiness?  There is an alas in this song of tenderness.  
If we return to the old house as a return to the nest, it means

that memories are dreams, that the house of the past has become 
a grand image, the grand image of lost intimacies.  


the poetics of space               


No comments: