The eyelids glowing, some chill morning. <br />O world half-known through opening, twilit lids <br /> Before the vague face clenches into light; <br />O universal waters like a cloud, <br /> Like those first clouds of half-created matter; <br />O all things rising, rising like the fumes <br /> From waters falling, O forever falling; <br />Infinite, the skeletal shells that fall, relinquished, <br /> The snowsoft sift of the diatoms, like selves <br />Downdrifting age upon age through milky oceans; <br /> O slow downdrifting of the atoms; <br />O island nebulae and O the nebulous islands <br /> Wandering these mists like falsefires, which are true, <br />Bobbing like milkweed, like warm lanterns bobbing <br /> Through the snowfilled windless air, blinking and passing <br />As we pass into the memory of women <br /> Who are passing. Within those depths <br />What ravening? What devouring rage? <br /> How shall our living know its ends of yielding? <br />These things have taken me as the mouth an orange— <br /> That acrid sweet juice entering every cell; <br />And I am shared out. I become these things: <br /> These lilies, if these things are water lilies <br />Which are dancers growing dim across no floor; <br /> These mayflies; whirled dust orbiting in the sun; <br />This blossoming diffused as rushlights; galactic vapors; <br /> Fluorescence into which we pass and penetrate; <br />O soft as the thighs of women; <br /> O radiance, into which I go on dying ...<br /><br />William De Witt Snodgrass<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/monet-les-nymph-as/
