Cloudy, misty, muggy in Providence. Back from lunchbreak dawdle down to India Point harbor.

Pondering personal writing dilemmas & conundra.

Enjoyed reading Hopkins poem at Chris Murray blog. Obligatory demurral of "single God" mentality. Hopkins' argument encapsulated in final lines of Divina Commedia : the light penetrates, and then shines, flares, blooms - reflected back in the joyful things of creation.

Not so simply single, though simple nevertheless. Imago, imago, imago. My Byzantium. Ancient Light. Triad & waltz. See Nicolas de Cusa for complete explication. Human approximations of the Infinite-Eternal, artefacts of a human cosmos; yet touched (at the limit, at the vortex, at the vanishing pt., at the matrix, at the center of the Last Supper) by redemption. The sign of Jonah is the only sign.

Musing again about difference between prose-narrative and poetry-lyric. Curious mimetic Now of representation (Proust & his Moment of recall), and on the other hand, the immediate Now of lyric recital, which gathers time into its enactment. Homer at the limit (poem/narrative). Bible (chronicle & psalm, or jeremiad).

The contemporary lyric artefact, unhinged from any "master" mastering mastered narrative, any plot, any story. The syntax-logic of an assertion, an argument, is also a mini-story. What do you bring to tell us? What good news?

What is it to read? What is a book? A splinter from the dark wood, from the forest of shades. A ship-message in a bottle thrown to the absent interlocutor. Since you're not here, I'll write it down. A borderland between here & there, life & death.

Eurydice, your absence takes on a mortal coloring. Time stops in your shade.