Sunday, August 1, 2010

The Descent


The descent beckons
as the ascent beckoned
Memory is a kind
of accomplishment
a sort of renewal
even
an initiation, since the spaces it opens are new
places
inhabited by hordes
heretofore unrealized,
of new kinds-
since their movements
are towards new objectives
(even though formerly they were abandoned)

No defeat is made up entirely of defeat-since
the world it opens is always a place
formerly
unsuspected. A
world lost,
a world unsuspected
beckons to new places
and no whiteness (lost) is so white as the memory
of whiteness .

With evening, love wakens
though its shadows
which are alive by reason
of the sun shining
grow sleepy now and drop away
from desire .

Love without shadows stirs now
beginning to waken
as night
advances.

The descent
made up of despairs
and without accomplishment
realizes a new awakening :
which is a reversal
of despair.

For what we cannot accomplish, what
is denied to love,
what we have lost in the anticipation-
a descent follows,
endless and indestructible.

-William Carlos Williams


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