Images imagined and recalled <br />rain on the masterpoet’s mind like mist <br />that lubricates the lips that have enthralled <br />him in the past, but he has never kissed. <br /> <br />Inspired by Robert Lowell’s “Epilogue, ” cited by Thomas L. Jeffers in the October 2003 issue of Commentary: which begins: <br /> <br />Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme–– <br />why are they no help to me now <br />I want to make <br />something imagined, not recalled. <br />I hear the noise of my own voice: <br />The painter’s vision is not a lens, <br />It trembles to caress the light. <br />But sometimes everything I write <br />with the threadbare art of my eye <br />seems a snapshot, <br />lurid, rapid, garish, grouped, <br />heightened from life, <br />yet paralyzed by fact. <br />All’s misalliance. <br />Yet why not say what happened? <br />Pray for the grace of accuracy <br />Vermeer gave to the sun’s illumination <br />stealing like the tide across a map <br />to his girl solid with yearning. <br />We are poor passing facts, <br />warned by that to give <br />each figure in the photograph <br />his living name. <br /> <br />10/4/03,3/12/09<br /><br />gershon hepner<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/images-imagined-and-recalled/
