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Longing Explained by William James

I know the color blue when I see it, and the flavor of
a pear when I taste it ... but about the inner nature
of these facts ... I can say nothing at all. — W.J.



Pears will come to you if you are patient
Blue will come               a mood of green 
so confusion rules all things


The mind         an appetite grammarian
summons gods from glances
full of chance antiquities
 

I met you in a place      that is that place
because I met you the spine of English
softening between us

                                                     a village
where each               through his sewing
and weaving   utters the mimic’s prayer
to memory

It is permanently summer there
                                    hedgerows mostly
                           a sort of slow vanishing


your image from every vantage
                                                    absented


So tugs possession impatient and abstract
whose troubled                        grace is lack.