Great Stone Face

Perhaps something ought to be said about how deadpan

It all is, your experience as it is called, although

It seems you are its, really, rather than vice versa;

How for all your convulsive sobbing, laughter and pity

It never sheds a tear or tips a wink, never betrays

Even the merest flicker of amusement.

It’s hard making up your mind without any hints,

And someone should say something about how you feel

You are never quite getting the point, about how

Every time the bucket plunges deeper down the well

To haul up the subtle something glittering there,

A pause for thought arrives to cancel understanding,

Make nonsense of your efforts at an accurate account.

Of course, it’s just such uncertainty that makes us

What we are, just this tremendous reserve in things

That leads us to expect an object of our curiosity

And sets us sifting the air of spring afternoons

In search of whatever it could be that brings

The astonishing crocus to life beneath our feet

And splashes forsythias about in Fauvist strokes.

The distance it all keeps is what keeps you looking

(Through language, through landscape’s irregular grammar)

For what it is that enthralls you so, what it is

That draws you forth to shiver like the flowering leaves,

And that will someday put you down, an exhausted thing,

Will cast you back upon some inscrutable conclusion,

Letting you drop out of a vast indifference, out

Of some private dissatisfaction, releasing you

One day in an uneasy response all its own.