The Margin
—A page does not become empty because nothing is written upon it.—
There is a page no printing ever keeps,
Whose margin widens when the daylight fails;
I found it where the patient silence sleeps
Between two ordinary household tales.
Nothing was writ. Yet, looking long, I knew
The blank had somehow recognised me too.
A sparrow lit upon the window-sill—
Forgive me; not because the poets must.
It only came because the air was still,
And shook one feather free into the dust.
I watch'd it leave. The feather stay'd behind,
As if departure keeps another mind.
The room contain'd no emblem to explain,
Only a coat hung quietly by the door,
One cup half-fill'd, the whispering of rain,
A shoe whose leather bent a little more.
I thought: perhaps the world is deepest where
Nothing has labour'd to become more fair.
Then something small, so small I almost miss'd
The manner of its entering the room:
The sleeve within the empty coat made fist,
Then loos'd itself before the fading gloom.
No wind was there. No memory was sought.
The cloth forgot the difference from thought.
I cannot tell what alter'd after this.
The rain remain'd; the cup remain'd half-full;
The feather kept the grammar of its bliss;
The evening neither quicken'd nor grew dull.
Only the blank page lost its vacant art,
And waited like a chair inside the heart.
If ever words should fail thee—and they shall—
Go not in search of loftier tongues than thine.
Stand where unnoticed certainties befall,
Until the common yields its hidden sign.
The truest poems are seldom those we start;
They are the ones already writing us apart.
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