Robert Duncan

Bending the Bow
 
We've our business to attend Day's duties,
bend back the bow in dreams as we may
til the end rimes in the taut string
with the sending. Reveries are rivers and flow
where the cold light gleams reflecting the window upon the
   surface of the table,
the presst-glass creamer, the pewter sugar bowl, the litter
   of coffee cups and saucers,
carnations painted growing upon whose surfaces. The whole
composition of surfaces leads into the other
                  current disturbing
what I would take hold of. I'd been
 
in the course of a letter – I am still
in the course of a letter – to a friend,
who comes close in to my thought so that
the day is hers. My hand writing here
there shakes in the currents of... of air?
of an inner anticipation of...? reaching to touch
ghostly exhilarations in the thought of her.
 
                  At the extremity of this
                       design
"there is a connexion working in both directions, as in
                  the bow and the lyre"–
only in that swift fulfillment of the wish
                       that sleep
                  can illustrate my hand
                     sweeps the string.
 
You stand behind the where-I-am.
The deep tones and shadows I will call a woman.
The quick high notes... You are a girl there too,
     having something of sister and of wife,
                       inconsolate,
and I would play Orpheus for you again,
 
                  recall the arrow or song
                  to the trembling daylight
                  from which it sprang.

 

Portrait
Back to Poems in alphabetical order
Back to Poems sorted by author