Whether it was a particular beauty
Stirred the tearfall from the eyelid’ s rim,
Rinsing the world once more with self,
Was it not there the general peered,
Thousand-eyed, down from the peak
In the last of all imaginary sunsets?
The light divided in half, the half
Divided again in half, the way
Zeno’ s paradox makes nothing move
Because an infinity of points between
Target and arrow, though never seen,
Exists. And there is snow in a capsule,
A solid floor of individual
Flakes that, shaken, settle in a field —
Parachutists growing where the grass,
One moment before, was only natural.
I am speaking now of the diminishment
Or enhancement of enchanted objects,
Of how they turn into nothingness
Or burnish the imagination:
A fire at the bottom of the sea,
For instance, or a mind in space
Thinking its way into science fiction,
Or, inside the skull, a little world
Clinging, about to be thrown away —
Miraculous lint under a bell.