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Vista.
Cloud shadows on mountains.
Mountains, yet higher the clouds,
to cast their shadows.
And far beyond, the sun
to cast its light on the clouds.
All this cast in the eye,
the view cast on the view.
Which is the grander view?
How to separate view?
Vista.
Vast.
The field of vision around me.
To sense what exceeds, vertigo of casting.
To encompass this encompassing at once.
Vertigo above, beyond, meta.
I'll start again
because who could ever make
a metaphor, a figure
as great as the
translucent shadow of the
clouds cast on already
grand vistas far below.
As grand and light.
Who could make the stroke of it?
Save these backwards creators
drawing off.
Grander still inferred,
light: sun, a star, its planet,
and this whisp of exchange.
This analogy of creation,
how it goes between
the scale that exceeds me
and my thinking scale.
Which is the larger image?
Which holds the other?
The floating plane of clouds,
with shadows below.
Can I make words like that?
Create the same effect with words?
The ground falling away
from the plane of city lights at night,
the continents of clouds
that tease the closest sense
and disperse around it.
Can I write a poem or piece
about mountains, clouds, shadows, light, air
-- array
(repose?
[-- other word for relation,
aesthetic assembly,
that seeing their relation,
to the sun as well, for example,
gives an aesthetic sense
that might as well be
the idea of air.
Space -- cf. etym. Also compare "place."
Heidegger's presencing, Darstellung, etc.
Was the sense of this originally empty or full?
Was "place" a sense with other "things" posed in it?--])--
Anyway, the poem goes on
wishing I could write something,
a poem or song or music,
to express this,
if even words were able,
drawing,
as if to create such material.
Present always represent.
Something like:
Shadowlight.
Heine's airy remains
of the gods--
But, no. Who could ever
make a figure as great?
If metaphor is to carry,
then let it this view to you,
a more literal vehicle
to drive you there.
This view great and small,
your eye that takes it in
diaphanous as the sky,
blues and whites lucid watery.
And to tell you,
figure with such scope
and grace and stroke,
cast this chiaroscuro compass
as you, billowing to the horizon
of significance.
You like clouds
grand and light.
But what use, too, to make words
your color, hair, skin, eyes,
water, light, air, way.
Here place the verses and verses
mute, blank, undone,
written in every urge to you.
Dances and gestures.
For most like the clouds you are
figure that exceeds description.
Perhaps it comes to only one way
to say, only one thing
to call it all:
Maud.
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