There they were, unchanged, confirmed in their present selves.
Or again: once in another summer, crossing Westward,
I entered the Park by an unfamiliar gate, and mounted
A fair rise, crashed through brush, took a wrong path, and ended
Up on that eminence of old at a late, late hour,
Surprised by a distant sound of shouting-
A child's, on Eagle Hill, below my vision-and there
They were, barely enclosed in their modest, open room,
Gaily shaded by hedges interlaced carelessly
With the lowering sunlight. Taken, those unastonished pools,
By surprise, by the wrong approach, they lay as
if
unperused,
More like themselves than ever, all immediate surface
And rippled whorls of reflection shimmering as
if
newly
Glimpsed, free of deceit, free of perspective's absurd
Draperies; smiling; and yet concerned.
And all was silence, save for the roaring of the world
In its turning. As once, not long before, the same smiling
Silence hung in the air around my head, unheard,
While far away beyond the bath-houses the wild
Surf slapped out its breath against the beach with sighs
And long, gasping diastoles; for there, before
My wearied eye at the knot-hole, ringed with noon's high sunlight,
The three undressing girls stopped for a moment, awed
By the quiet air and the sun and all.
And there, there, there they were, grouped in the narrow locker
Within my breathless ring of vision, unbroken circle
Of heads averted, stretched arms, and all motions stopped,
One from the rear, the others facing me and turned
Gently inward, the gleam of skin and shadow of fur
Giving of all their surfaces, phenomena generous
Beyond deserving, as
if
the
good
one did were served
With double return, as
if
one could face the benefit,
The moments of light now, the given present.
But all in an instant becomes the past, the intermittent ...
The given is withdrawn. Whether a meteor trail
A following streak of fire or of searing after-image,
Our very glimpse of it consumes what should remain;
Cumulonimbus gatherings aloft in the blue fail,
Falling in the wind, into senseless blobs of cotton
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