Sweeps.

Cole, Clouds, 1838

SKY

I should have begun with this: the sky.

A window minus sill, frame, and panes.

An aperture, nothing more,

but wide open.

I don't have to wait for a starry night,

I don't have to crane my neck

to get a look at it.

I've got the sky behind my back, at hand, and on my eyelids.

The sky binds me tight

and sweeps me off my feet.

Even the highest mountains

are no closer to the sky

than the deepest valleys.

There's no more of it in one place

than another.

A mole is no less in seventh heaven

than the owl spreading her wings.

The object that falls in an abyss

falls from sky to sky.

Grainy, gritty, liquid,

inflamed, or volatile

patches of sky, specks of sky,

gusts and heaps of sky.

The sky is everywhere,

even in the dark beneath your skin.

I eat the sky, I excrete the sky.

I'm a trap within a trap,

an inhabited inhabitant,

an embrace embraced,

a question answering a question.

Division into sky and earth —

it's not the proper way

to contemplate this wholeness.

It simply lets me go on living

at a more exact address

where I can be reached promptly

if I'm sought.

My identifying features

are rapture and despair.

Wislawa Szymborska