To a Forgotten Dutch Painter

The wheat-straw hangs down broken; the nicked leaf

Deploys on air; the snails drag shells like trinkets;

And Master Fly sits in his spot of sun

Upon the yellowing leaf. - This tells me all.

You are a poet, for you love the thing

Itself. In twenty ways you make me know

You dote on difference little as that which sets

Berry apart from berry in the handful.

- "How singular is nigh-identical !"

You cry to dullards; given eyes, we see

The split pod or the briared vine house contraries

Narrowly opposite in a tent of sameness

(Not one but has its urgency upon it).

-"In deep, at the pith, where life makes push, it sits,

The I, the me, the myself, of the cherry,"

You say so plain that I can never doubt it;

-"Sit down before a clover-head," you say,

"As if it were a city to be taken.

Invest it round. There is but little hope."

- "The poppy-seed is a commodious place,"

You urge, and prove it; I behold for you

The negligible ort assume its state

And bridle like a girl looked on with love.

Though all must be whelmed under, yet on the brink

These keep a slippery foothold for a while;

Safe still your darling seed-wafts, drupes and umbels.

Your purpling gooseberry hung by a hair

Has faced down doom; doom looked twice, and went

by....

The thing loved well carries the mark upon it.

It outbeams radium. And time lets it be.