Alchemy is the art of far and near, and I think poetry is alchemy in that way. It’s delightful to distort size, to see something that’s tiny as though it were vast.
Near
When Beverly and I got together in 1992, and I moved to be with her in the little round house she’d built in the middle of 20 acres of woods near Amity, I found myself immersed in a natural setting that I responded to with all my being.
I’ve had a number of near misses during my travels that in retrospect seem of greater concern than they did at the time. I guess that is what happens with age.
My message to everyone: the next time you hear about migrant children near the border, just picture them as your own. Then think what you would want our government to do.
To the solemn graves, near a lonely cemetery, my heart like a muffled drum is beating funeral marches.
Life’s enchanted cup sparkles near the brim.
Whether rich or poor, a home is not a home unless the roots of love are ever striking deeper through the crust of the earthly and the conventional, into the very realities of being, not consciously always; seldom, perhaps; the simplicity of loving grows by living simply near nature and God.
‘Ulysses’ is the greatest anti-racist text in the English language, and it challenges right from the beginning the vicious racism which lies near the foundations of the Irish Free State and of the Irish republic.
I really believe in science. It is a faith. It is a reverence akin to religion. But as we always say, it’s different from religion in that, as near as we can tell, it exists outside of us. It has an objective quality, the process of science.
Youth sees too far to see how near it is To seeing farther.