Escape.

Savrasov, Pond at Dusk, 1879

The DISCOVERY of DAILY EXPERIENCE

It is a whisper. You turn somewhere,

hall, street, some great even: the stars

or the lights hold; your next step waits you

and the firm world waits–but

there is a whisper. You always live so,

a being that receives, or partly receives, or

fails to receive each moment’s touch.

You see the people around you–the honors

they bear–a crutch, a cane, eye patch,

or the subtler ones, that fixed look, a turn

aside, or even the brave bearing: all declare

our kind, who serve on the human front and earn

whatever disguise will take them home. (I saw

Frank last week with his crutch de guerre.)

When the world is like this–and it is–

whispers, honors or penalties disguised–no wonder

art thrives like a pulse wherever civilized people,

or any people, live long enough in a place to

build, and remember, and anticipate; for we are

such beings as interact elaborately with what

surrounds us. The limited actual world we successively

overcome by fictions and by the mind’s inventions

that cannot be quite arbitrary (and hence do reflect

the actual), but can escape the actual (and hence

may become art).

William Stafford