Slowly, slowly, wisdom gathers: Golden dust in the afternoon, Somewhere between the sun and me, Sometimes so near that I can see, But never settling, late or soon. Would that it did, and a rug of gold Spread west of me a mile or more: Not large, but so that I might lie Face up, between the earth and sky, And know what none has known before. Then I would tell as best I could The secrets of that shining place: The web of the world, how thick, how thin, How firm, with all parts folded in; How ancient, and how full of grace.
This poem by Mark Van Doren, written late in his life, I committed to memory as part of a project to furnish my mind. Though I started with works by other poets, I found that Van Doren’s kept attracting me. Eventually I laid up more than twenty. I enjoy reciting them to myself as I lay in the dark or as I walk. Indeed, they sing to each other in me, like a chorus of many voices, all from a single sensibility.
Every time I recite this, and others of his poems, from memory, it comes out slightly different, as if I’m always just learning what it was the poet meant. It’s not that it is hard to interpret, but that the making of the poem was itself an encounter, and each rendition thereafter has the brand-newness, the freshness of yet another encounter. I can read the poem, but it’s as true to say it reads me–as I can hear in each recitation.
‘That shining place’ I sense what it means, and long for what I sense. The whole poem is the project of putting that into words, and only in the poem entire, does glory radiate through.
I love the line: ‘how firm, with all parts folded in’. An image that comes to mind is of the marvelous structure of insects, as for instance the ready-to-deploy wings tucked safely under the spotted wing case of a ladybug. Simply said, marvelous to say.