"Of the Surface of Things"

I

In my room, the world is beyond my understanding; 

But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four 

Hills and a cloud.

II

From my balcony, I survey the yellow air, 

Reading where I have written, 

"The spring is like a belle undressing."

III

The gold tree is blue, 

The singer has pulled his cloak over his head. 

The moon is in the folds of the cloak.

Upon opening my Bible, I happened to come across this particular poem. A poem about poetry perhaps more obviously stated than others. I found the three sections to be a series of steps or dimensions in the process of writing poetry.

The first verse is observing the world in an immediate reality. "In my room, the world is beyond my understanding." The poet seems stuck, confined to a state of mind that does not let him see past the common reality of things. It's not until the poet ventures outside of his comfort zones and give up his illusions that he is able to progress.

In the second verse, the balcony acts as a threshold between dimensions of reality and imagination. He is in the "yellow air" of enlightenment, an altered state of consciousness that helps him converse between the outside world of reality and the inside world of imagination. 

In the third verse, the poet is lost in his revelation crossing over into the realm of imagination. The poet is no longer bound to mimicking what he sees in the world. The cloak he wears is his imagination and within it he can obscure the immediate reality of the world and finally see the world as it truly is.

"Earthly Anecdote"

http://hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/earthysmall.jpg

"Tattoo"

The light is like a spider. 

It crawls over the water.

It crawls over the edges of the snow.

It crawls under your eyelids

And spreads its webs there--

Its two webs.

The webs of your eyes

Are fastened 

To the flesh and bones of you

As to rafters or grass.

There are filaments of your eyes 

On the surface of the water 

And in the edges of the snow.

"Floral Decorations for Bananas"

Well, nuncle, this plainly won't do.
These insolent, linear peels
And sullen, hurricane shapes
Won't do with your eglantine.
They require something serpentine.
Blunt yellow in such a room!

You should have had plums tonight,
In an eighteenth-century dish,
And pettifogging buds,
For the women of primrose and purl,
Each one in her decent curl.
Good God! What a precious light!

But bananas hacked and hunched ...
The table was set by an ogre,
His eye on an outdoor gloom
And a stiff and noxious place.
Pile the bananas on planks.
The women will be all shanks
And bangles and slatted eyes.

And deck the bananas in leaves
Plucked from the Carib trees,
Fibrous and dangling down,
Oozing cantankerous gum
Out of their purple maws,
Darting out of their purple craws
Their musky and tingling tongues.

"The Load of Sugar-Cane"

The going of the glade boat
Is like water flowing;
Like water flowing
Through the green saw gr,
Under the rainbows;
Under the rainbows
That are like birds,
Turning, bedizened,
While the wind still whistles
As kildeer do,
When they rise
At the red turban
Of the boatman.

"Of Heaven Considered a Tomb"

What word have you, interpreters, of men
Who in the tomb of heaven walk by night,
The darkened ghosts of our old comedy?
Do they believe they range the gusty cold,
With lanterns borne aloft to light the way,
Freemen of death, about and still about
To find whatever it is they seek? Or does
That burial, pillared up each day as porte
And spiritous passage into nothingness,
Foretell each night the on abysmal night,
When the host shall no more wander, nor the light
Of the steadfast lanterns creep across the dark?
Make hue among the dark comedians,
Halloo them in the topmost distances
For answer from their icy Elysee.

"Anecdote of Men by the Thousand"

The soul, he said, is composed
Of the external world.

There are men of the East, he said,
Who are the East.
There are men of a province
Who are that province.
There are men of a valley
Who are that valley.

There are men whose words
Are as natural sounds
Of their places
As the cackle of toucans
In the place of toucans.

The mandoline is the instrument
Of a place.

Are there mandolines of western mountains?
Are there mandolines of northern moonlight?

The dress of a woman of Lhassa,
In its place,
Is an invisible element of that place
Made visible.

"Nuances of a Theme by Williams"

It's a strange courage
you give me, ancient star:

Shine alone in the sunrise
toward which you lend no part!

I
Shine alone, shine nakedly, shine like bronze
that reflects neither my face nor any inner part
of my being, shine like fire, that mirrors nothing.

II

Lend no part to any humanity that suffuses
you in its own light.
Be not chimera of morning,
Half-man, half-star.
Be not an intelligence,
Like a widow's bird
Or an old horse.