The Unifying Principle

Ramshackles, archipelagoes, loose constellations

are less fierce, subsidiary centers, with the

attenuations of interstices, roughing the salience,

jarring the outbreak of too insistent commonalty:

a board, for example, not surrendering the rectitude

of its corners, the island of the oaks an

admonishment to pines, underfigurings (as of the Bear)

that take identity on: this motion is against

the grinding oneness of seas, hallows distinction

into the specific: but less lovely, too, for how

is the mass to be amassed, by what sanction

neighbor touch neighbor, island bear resemblance,

how are distinction's hard lines to be dissolved

(and preserved): what may all the people turn to,

the old letters, the shaped, characteristic peak

generations of minds have deflected and kept:

a particular tread that sometimes unweaves, taking

more shape on, into dance: much must be

tolerated as out of timbre, out of step, as being not

in its time or mood (the hiatus of the unconcerned)

and much room provided for the wretched to find caves

to ponder way off in: what then can lift the people

and only when they choose to rise or what can make

them want to rise, though business prevents: the

unifying principle will be a

phrase shared, an old cedar long known, general

wind-shapes in a usual sand: those objects single,

single enough to be uninterfering, multiple by

the piling on of shared sight, touch, saying:

when it's found the people live the small wraths of ease.