An Explanation of America (Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets)

From An Explanation of America:

LAIR



Robert Pinsky
?

Inexhaustible, delicate, as if

Without source or medium, daylight

Undoes the mind; the infinite,

Empty actual is too bright,

Scattering to where the road

Whispers, through a mile of woods

Later, how quiet the house is:

Dusk-like and refined,

The sweet Phoebe-note

Piercing from the trees;

The calm globe of the morning,

Things to read or to write

Ranged on a table; the brain

A dark, stubborn current that breathes

Blood, a deaf wadding,

The hands feeding it paper

And sensations of wood or metal

On its own terms. Trying to read

I persist a while, finish the recognition

By my breath of a dead giant's breath--

Stayed by the space of a rhythm,

Witnessing the blue gulf of the air.