Sunday, March 18, 2007

Do not expect...

Do not expect that if your book falls open
to a certain page, that any phrase
you read will make a difference today,
or that the voices you might overhear
when the wind moves through the yellow-green
and golden tent of autumn, speak to you.

Things ripen or go dry. Light plays on the
dark surface of the lake. Each afternoon
your shadow walks beside you on the wall,
and the days stay long and heavy underneath
the distant rumor of the harvest. One
more summer gone,
and one way or another you survive,
dull or regretful, never learning that
nothing is hidden in the obvious
changes of the world, that even the dim
reflection of the sun on tall, dry grass
is more than you will ever understand.

And only briefly then
you touch, you see, you press against
the surface of impenetrable things.

Dana Gioia

6 comments:

Elliot said...

He's a Catholic!

I've heard some interesting interviews with him. He's got deep ideas about poetry.

Anactoria said...

Um. Yes, I know. But what does his being a Catholic necessarily have to do with the poem? :P

Its not always about religion, you!

But yes, I knew you liked him.

Elliot said...

With a poem like that you'd expect him to believe in meaninglessness or something, that's all.

Elliot said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anactoria said...

Oh, I see.

Hmm. Actually considering he's a Catholic, I like the poem even more.

Its like a rebuke of all those people who take every little thing that happens in their life as a sign from God.

(Or even those people who like to flip open their Bibles and pick the first verse at random and then read a special "meaning" into it.)

Anactoria said...

I think he *is* saying that the world can seem meaningless a lot of the time. But then every now and then "you press against the surface of impenetrable things."