And there they were, but not as they had been remembered,
Two hardly distinguishable, the third dried-out and muddy,
Misshapen clumps of puddle, they lay, a visionary
Disaster, before me, my eyes bleared and my heart fluttering–
As
if
the recollected surfaces had sunk
Down into crusty sockets of earth, ringed
with
sparse and
Dried-out grass, the given presence absorbed by dull,
Treasureless mines that the thirsty, chilling present park's
Ground all had come to, dark and hard.
Mud at my heart, I could only stare, then turn to the east and
Vanish into the Ramble, losing the misplaced
And badly recollected pools behind me, even
As the city itself was hidden behind the narrow frame
And binding horizons of trees and underbrush. I made
My way across the cold, unfeeling paths that twist ·
About through the real distances, and finally came
Out
of the park, into the unmistakable city
Safe for the heart, because unenvisioned.
- Not like some misremembered loveliness of trees
Bare, for instance, of leaf in misty February:
Their blackish filaments, plane behind plane, receding
Into the general and dissolving gray, are melted
Down to remembrances of branches, to negatives,
To losses. I coughed in the fumes of traffic, as around me
Windows and parking-lights and other presences
Emitted a world I was hardly grateful for. It crowded
Behind my eyes in that darkening hour.
As
if
the pools had vanished into the unabsorbent
Ground, I would avoid for months and months thereafter
The eminence they'd lain upon, now always courting
Other corners of path and bench and brush, the Ramble
Springing to green and filling the sky's borders with splashes
Of decoration. Down in some dirty dale, all hunched
Into a fading bench, time after time I sat
Brooding over the few pictures of those sunken
Pools I had kept untorn and uncluttered.
And once I walked toward where I pictured them separated
By clumps of protecting privet, emerging, as once ascended,
In tiers, first one, then, hidden, the second giving way
