Poem Written at Morning

A sunny day's complete Poussiniana

Divide it from itself. It is this or that

And it is not.

By metaphor you paint

A thing. Thus, the pineapple was a leather fruit,

A fruit for pewter, thorned and palmed and blue,

To be served by men of ice.

The senses paint

By metaphor. The juice was fragranter

Than wettest cinnamon. It was cribled pears

Dripping a morning sap.

The truth must be

That you do not see, you experience, you feel,

That the buxom eye brings merely its element

To the total thing, a shapeless giant forced

Upward.

Green were the curls upon that head.