Читать книгу No Second Eden - Turner Cassity - Страница 14

Not to Seize the Moment

A long-advancing change of color, eau de Nil

Overtly overriding green, the tide comes in.

As smooth as contact paper, in bright lack of wind

The East Bay matches glare for glare the Golden Gate,

Their brilliance darkening the islands spaced between.

A former prison one, and one an Ellis West,

They make the Bridge a Bridge of Sighs. Pacific Heights

Has palaces in place. It can be other hand.

So far from Venice and so near the ferry slips,

Art classes—watercolorists—make of the light

Such as they can. It may not come again. Tide does,

Or is not tide. That much can be predicted. Light—

Broad, brief—is prophesied in no ephemeris.

Already, as the sky’s kaleidoscope turns round,

And on the dampened paper, calculatedly,

The careful colors run, the even-lighted scene,

So whole, so uniform before, goes various.

The watercolor dries; the turning tide goes out.

To capture is to compromise. Set free the scene

And see its evanescence as an absolute.