Modern American Poetry

(^108) Thomas R. Whitaker
I am sick Sick
of the smallness of April of April’s smallness
the leaves the the little
yellow flowers—^16 leaves—(CEP,71)
In another poem, “Rain,” much of the meaning of this sequence is
summarized: on the one hand, our chronic psychological cramp, which
closes, shapes, possesses, and defends from the weather; on the other, that
opening which may discover the healing wash of love.
As the rain falls
so does
your love
bathe every
open
object of the world— (CEP,74)
It is this recognition that then
so spreads
the words
far apart to let in
her love (CEP,75)
Though necessarily discerned in and through forms, love transcends those
forms and is negated by any form that would capture and hold rather than
reveal. Love is not, therefore, consonant with the desire for perfect formal or
practical attainment. In the wordly sense (as Kora in Hellhad said of the
imagination) “nothing will come of it” (K,17). That is why the poem’s
opening analogy leads to a contrast. From the “liquid clearness” of the rain
“flowers / come / perfectly / into form”—
But love is
unworldly
and nothing
comes of it but love
following
and falling endlessly