Whether it was a particular beauty
Stirred the tearfall from the eyelid's rim,
Rinsing the world once more with self,
Was it not there the general peered,
Thousand-eyed, down from the peak
In the last of all imaginary sunsets?
The light divided in half, the half
Divided again in half, the way
Zeno's paradox makes nothing move
Because an infinity of points between
Target and arrow, though never seen,
Exists. And there is snow in a capsule,
A solid floor of individual
Flakes that, shaken, settle in a field—
Parachutists growing where the grass,
One moment before, was only natural.
I am speaking now of the diminishment
Or enhancement of enchanted objects,
Of how they turn into nothingness
Or burnish the imagination:
A fire at the bottom of the sea,
For instance, or a mind in space
Thinking its way into science fiction,
Or, inside the skull, a little world
Clinging, about to be thrown away—
Miraculous lint under a bell.