Moments When Eternity Seems Clear

You think about the inherent qualities of a feeling
That there’s something like it to have certain kinds 
Of mental states you think for example that there's 
This thing it is like to see in the Mauritshuis the blue 
Headband of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring  
Or that there’s this other thing it’s like to listen 
For the first time to Jacques Brel sing “Les Bourgeois” 
On an old four-song record you found at Goodwill 
You think about the properties in virtue of which 
These things are true of some states of mind yet not
Of others and you see how each is very different 
Like racing bulls and sailing on the Rhine

You know there’s no comparison no way to say

Why you sometimes moan like nobody’s business

As If We Could Live in a Lightning Flash Innumerable Years

Cherishing those reflections you walk along all

Sparrowy as if you don’t give a good goddamn 

Humming unimaginable sentiments as usual there

Beneath great grieving towers of a yellow city

O I know you love to read by candlelight I know

Drizzling rain a blind river and martyred trees I have

All these words and I ride like a dark horseman 

Upon your soul-shade here under wet leaves I

Imagine how tranquil gazing you shut a window

Put out a light precise as an old engraving good 

God let’s just be here beside a fountain let’s ignore

Your seething city my river let's be lost in some 
Geography where flowers get up especially early

Where cars honk and foghorns moan and we do too