For Once
pace R.L.F.
Over Mr Frost's well-curb
Peering down into the deep
Echoes of the past, for once
They look well-meaning
And only then a flash of white
I say this is more than truth
More than well-whiskered cloud
But if two worlds why not three?
My heart's drumming like crazy
Dreams visit, a dizziness comes
Now what you see is what you get
They never thought to warn you.
© 2011 Rob Schackne
FOR ONCE, THEN, SOMETHING
ReplyDeleteOthers taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.
ROBERT FROST