In Everything I Seek To Grasp...

In everything I seek to grasp The fundamental: The daily choice, the daily task, The sentimental. To plumb the essence of the past, The first foundations, The crux, the roots, the inmost hearts, The explanations. And, puzzling out the weave of fate, Events observer, To live, feel, love and meditate And to discover. Oh, if my skill did but suffice After a fashion, In eight lines I'd anatomize The parts of passion. I'd write of sins, forbidden fruit, Of chance-seized shadows; Of hasty flight and hot pursuit, Of palms, of elbows. Define its laws and origin In terms judicial, Repeat the names it glories in, And the initials. I'd sinews strain my verse to shape Like a trim garden: The limes should blossom down the nape, A double cordon. My verse should breathe the fresh-clipped hedge, Roses and meadows And mint and new-mown hay and sedge, The thunder's bellows. As Chopin once in his etudes Miraculously conjured Parks, groves, graves and solitudes- A living wonder. The moment of achievement caught Twixt sport and torment… A singing bowstring shuddering taut, A stubborn bow bent.