The Plain Sense of Things

Photo by Christian Hänsel

After the leaves have fallen, we return 

To a plain sense of things. It is as if 

We had come to an end of the imagination, 

Inanimate in an inert savoir.

It is difficult even to choose the adjective 

For this blank cold, this sadness without cause. 

The great structure has become a minor house. 

No turban walks across the lessened floors.

The greenhouse never so badly needed paint. 

The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side. 

A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition 

In a repetitiousness of men and flies.

Yet the absence of the imagination had

Itself to be imagined. The great pond,

The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves,

Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence

Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see,

The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this

Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge,

Required, as a necessity requires.

~ Wallace Stevens

The Plain Sense of Things

Photo by Christian Hänsel

After the leaves have fallen, we return 

To a plain sense of things. It is as if 

We had come to an end of the imagination, 

Inanimate in an inert savoir.

It is difficult even to choose the adjective 

For this blank cold, this sadness without cause. 

The great structure has become a minor house. 

No turban walks across the lessened floors.

The greenhouse never so badly needed paint. 

The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side. 

A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition 

In a repetitiousness of men and flies.

Yet the absence of the imagination had

Itself to be imagined. The great pond,

The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves,

Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence

Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see,

The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this

Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge,

Required, as a necessity requires.

~ Wallace Stevens

The Lamp

Source: DHD Multimedia Gallery

I write in order to comprehend not to express myself
I don’t grasp anything I’m not ashamed to admit it
sharing this not knowing with a maple leaf
So I turn with questions to words wiser than myself
to things that will endure long after us
I wait to gain wisdom from chance
I expect sense from silence
Perhaps something suddenly will happen
and pulse with hidden truth
like the spirit of the flame in the oil lamp
under which we bowed our heads
when we were very young
and grandma crossed the bread with a knife
and we believed in everything
So now I yearn for nothing as much
as for that faith

~ Anna Kamienska

The Lamp

Source: DHD Multimedia Gallery

I write in order to comprehend not to express myself
I don’t grasp anything I’m not ashamed to admit it
sharing this not knowing with a maple leaf
So I turn with questions to words wiser than myself
to things that will endure long after us
I wait to gain wisdom from chance
I expect sense from silence
Perhaps something suddenly will happen
and pulse with hidden truth
like the spirit of the flame in the oil lamp
under which we bowed our heads
when we were very young
and grandma crossed the bread with a knife
and we believed in everything
So now I yearn for nothing as much
as for that faith

~ Anna Kamienska