Or this, from "Echo:"
Downstream
the one world,
flooded plain
in the mouth. So much
water under the bridge. Over
the chattering flux
an arch of sound
Look at "much" and "flux" here, look at "under" and "over," listen to the roundness of "sound" echoing the "down-" of "downstream."
From "Spring Rites," an end-stop with something around the corner yet:
... Oh, the light;
nowhere to hide....
From "Winter Solstice," how perfect the bareness:
... the bared
fields....
From "Impersonations of the Muse," the syntax lets us stop, but again there is something we need after the turn:
... He tells me of girls,
foundries of wishes in the refine
of bright hair....
And, farther along in the same poem, the rightness of the break between "dress/rehearsal:"
... I am the theater
without opening night, the dress
rehearsal....
From "Quae Amissa, Salva," how the word "now" rings, letting you think one thing, until you have to think another:
... As long as I can laugh, now
and then, I suppose, it's all right.
But enough of this.
Rightness of image? I was struck most keenly by the rightness of Benet's images in the poem about her father dying, "Incomplete Requiem." The poem opens:
I wish I could write something splendid
about death, but my father has been dying
for years....
Before her father's death, the duty to speak had become
... almost like a chore, like waiting in line
for bread in lean times, wondering
if it would be all gone when my turn came,
nothing but empty shelves.
In the second part of the poem, Benet looks at an old photograph of her father and herself taken in a cemetery, and the poem ends:
It was All Hallows' Eve, and we were
still together. We lit candles
and watched the crowd, the living
and the dead in a blaze of light.
So much of the closure here (and in other poems), so much of the meaning depends on the right image set exactly in the right place. This light which now is bright, she doesn't need to say, will soon burn out.
It has been quite some time since I read such a poignant poem by a daughter speaking of her father's death.
Continued at MAPMAKER - 3, below
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