LXXXIX

Don October 14th, 2009

LXXXIX Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.” 

            If you think Nature is mysterious, you should try to raise a human being.  If you think human beings are simply continuous with Nature, not uniquely created in the image of God, you either haven’t raised one or weren’t paying attention.  I was raising one while studying linguistics at the same time, which forced me and enabled me to pay attention in certain very fruitful ways.

 

The Poet to his Daughter at Eighteen Months

  

What a mystery, my little friend,

You are, what an enigma to me now!

Not all your forty words can tell me how

The least thing in this world appears to you.

And yet, the snatches that I apprehend:

A magic landscape now springs into view,

Now fades into the mist, and springs anew,

But leaves not one clear image in the end.

Oh, there will come a day when you can grope

About for metaphors that can let me

See through your eyes, and find them too, I hope.

But then, alas, the vision will not be

This bright one that I long so now to see.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

 

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