The Right Size

A landscape lies under the open sky . . . 
(Open? The sky’s the limit, 
the daylight veil over the illimitable, 
withdrawn for revelation from the darkness 
beyond of Adam’s first—and longest—nightmare 
trying to count quastars telstars from pulstars. 
Nth grandson Blaise, a rodent of nocturnal 
habit, was apprehensive of a white 
owl that at times would swoop—but Blaise would hoot—
in from the eternal silence of those infinite 
spaces on Blaise forlornly nibbling at 
predestination and incomprehensible 
grace. And his terror’s now old Adam’s tedium 
sed non laudamus infinitum . . .) 

Grace? 
Oh yes, it’s day again! All landscapes lie 
under a veiling sky. Each one embraces 
ten views, each view a hundred sights, each sight 
a thousand shapes, each separate shape a million 
discriminations made from inward darkness 
by instrument, and every single one 
some apprehension of infinitude . . .

Leave “lesser fleas,” and take a landscape’s grace!
Bigger than bugs, it’s not the animal 
a thousand miles in length that Aristotle 
so startlingly invented for rejection. 
How big’s the Ding an Sich”? Ansicht? The size
to have a face that we can see as one? 

Tired of the burden of things too large or small
or many for the eye, let us confine ourselves
to eyescope. Take the landscape! Te Deum
Incarnatum laudamus, flesh and bone 
standing veiled yet revealed through a column of light
shafted more candid down amid the shadow—
smooth boles of ash or beech than this clear morning
of early spring in this glade in this grove,
and with Jehovah, Thy beloved Son; 
Who made it all according to Thy Word,
being Himself the Word by which He made it
a garden in a landscape in a world 
created to man’s measure for his pleasure.
And yet our landscape lies under a sky 
close blue by day but open black at night.

May, 1969.