Aptly Colored

“Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us
is forced upon them by our conviction that they are
themselves and not anything else, by the immobility
of our conception of them.”

Swann’s Way: Combray, Marcel Proust


It’s taken fifty-seven years
for me to start to savor Proust:
I couldn’t not enjoy the plump
advantage of this richly feathered
roost I daily co-create – light

and green beyond my windows –
bright, inside, with such upholstered
densities, imaginary scenes –
now aptly colored by the vague
mist of recovery from transient

illness’ dreams – thus to persist in
this sweet stillness – so to dive
into the dawn of Swann. I could
go on, perhaps I will, perhaps
for quite the rest of life, to get

to where he got – or not. I learn
already from Proust's artful flight
that one has only to attend to
everything at once to get it right.
Ah, to weave one’s own variety

of meaning out of every fiber
of one’s sight! – just slightly sick,
just this strange sprightly
instant right before the quick
becomes the dead: though that

suggests a dread I do not feel:
today I let my senses reel
with just enough of that fleet
enigmatic music to imagine it
as an occasion to reveal the next

concealed scenario – led by this
strange engaging impresario,
Marcel. Brash of me, assuming
such an intimacy! Neither one
of us, perhaps, is quite yet well.


.