Sonnet (and then Recollection) Therapy

In my first literature class we learned about those who used poetry as a coping mechanism.
In my last literature class we learned that Strong Poets are influenced, kind of, but that they deny their precursor's direct association with their work.
Therefore, I'm going to attempt to assume myself a Strong poet and compose a sonnet for my own therapeutic purposes, "basing" it loosely on Wallace Stevens' last poem from Ideas of Order.
"Autumn Refrain"...

The skreak and skritter of evening gone
And grackles gone and sorrows of the sun,
The sorrows of sun, too, gone . . . the moon and moon,
The yellow moon of words about the nightingale
In measureless measures, not a bird for me
But the name of a bird and the name of a nameless air
I have never–shall never hear. And yet beneath

The stillness of everything gone, and being still,
Being and sitting still, something resides,
Some skreaking and skrittering residuum,
And grates these evasions of the nightingale
Though I have never–shall never hear that bird.
And the stillness is in the key, all of it is,
The stillness is all in the key of that desolate sound.

.........
"For Grammie"
An Indiana migrant whom has gone,
Left for the great palace beyond the sun.
Having passed from here, there she will be soon.
Presently her crescent ship has set sail,
Sojourning into the eternal sea.
Upon the moon I see her floating there,
Content. As Grandfar says, 'Not good, but well.
Spencer, be always as Grammie--Stilwell.'
'Yessir,' I'll assert when gitt'n to reply,
While my heart jumps as beats from a drum.
Sadly I'm sorry knowing not her tale
From the rote, except from what I've heard
Dad tell at home. Thousands of lengths was his
Trade placed, till now, as Eleanor's northbound.

Times are aging as autumn leaves changing,
But where else in the world would I want
To be? None. I'll see the south in a month
Where the family tree has one less leaf,
But no less soul. In death freedom's reigning.

Backstory:
Yesterday was Thursday. I woke up around eleven and went to get a bagel and a coffee which I would bring to Econ101. On my walk I ran into Rio. We chatted for a minute and then I split for class. In class I wrote a page and a half of poetry instead of listening and learning about Surplus, Substitute, and Complementary products in the market. Although I did notice that our professor, a gal in her mid-twenties who is teaching her first class, did a better job keeping the class interested and attentive allowing me to do my thing sitting on the top row in the large Leon Johnson lecture hall. Thereafter I got some reading done for my next class, Adolescent Literature, in the Wilson commons but Felicia told me I was reading the wrong article. Oops, I thought, but she lent me her print-off so I could knock out a few pages, which I did. In class I sat next to Rio, discussed the assigned article with Jill sitting the next row up, and then met Emmie sitting next to Jill who introduced herself, coincidentally knowing Isabel from work at Murdoch's. After class I walked off campus and went back to an empty apartment where I had thirty minutes to kill before my shift starts. I got a glass of water, checked the computer, put on my work attire, thought about what homework needed doing, and turned on the car. In no time I rolled into the employee parking lot. The building's big bay door was open, and I could hear my boss. It turns out there was a monthly store meeting, but I couldn't make it on time anyways cause I had class. No biggie. Phyllis discussed the agenda, involving a typical reiteration of "employee roles" "store integrity" "power delegation" etc. and too-oft repeated retail business standards in lieu of mandatory corporate followup. Then I get a call from my dad. It's 5:15, and I tell him I'll call back after seven. Then he said in an unusually solemn tone, "Um okay, yeah sorry call me back, it's kind of important." I said okay and hung up. Something was wrong. I could only think of one possibilty, why that thing I thought of I couldn't tell you, but I hoped to God it wouldn't be. I couldn't concentrate in the meeting so I excused myself and called back about five minutes later. "Hey bud, do you have a few minutes to talk?" I said yes, and he told me the news. Grandma Eleanor, Grammie is what we called her, had passed away earlier that afternoon. I knew it, and I hate saying it now. I sat down on my car's back bumper and cried a little. I think my dad did too, and still I've never seen him cry. I said I'm sorry to him and that I'd call him after I got off. Love you. Click. I sat still off the back bumper for a few minutes to collect myself before rejoining the meeting and went inside. I didn't say a damn thing to anyone about it at work. Death is something I never have dealt with. I probably seemed cranky, and I was becoming more so because of other things at work which hadn't gotten done. Won't get into that. I left on my delivery by six sharp, and I had to bring my boss home because she left her keys in Glenn's car when they had went to look at a house earlier that day. It was a warm day, but the sun was beginning to go down and we were en route to Belgrade. It was quiet, possibly awkward but I didn't care, until we got on the interstate and after several minutes of few-word exchanges we struck up a conversation about this and that from my former boss Taylor to my major and her family, business as usual along with life in general. It was real nice. Calming. In passing she expressed interest in recruiting me for a managerial posistion for Sherwin Williams, but I didn't express much interest back. Maybe I should have, but that wasn't something I wanted on my mind. I kept wanting to say something about Grammie but I couldn't. How do you just bring up something like that from out of the nowhere? That subject wouldn't arise. Phyllis was her usual, sarcastic, foul mouthed self. I thought about when I moved to Alaska and I would drive around and cruise the town to burn off steam. The driver's seat is where I find stress relief. Soon enough we got to Phyllis's place and she picked up her keys, and then we made three paint deliveries between Belgrade and Bozeman. We even passed Murdoch's statewide distribution warehouse. I find that funny. We made it back to Sherwin just past seven. Sam was counting tills and Lea was mopping. I went back to silent mode, although my phone vibrated. My cousin Beth texted me, "Thinking about u. loving u." She knew too, being kin of Aunt Stephanie my dad's sister. Fifteen minutes later I left work and called my dad again. We talked small, about mom driving to El Paso and school and then briefly about the funeral. I asked if we would come to Texas for it? Unlikely. Dad told me that when his grandfather died Grammie was the only person who went to the funeral in Florida. Everyone lived in Texas back then. We didn't talk about much more. Talk to you tomorrow. Click. I called Beth after. She lives in Durango, Colorado, where she graduated college. We haven't seen each other in five and half years, but we've talked and we talked about everything from the future and now to life and death, and when we did talk about Grammie I would begin to say something which quickly became uttered with the all-too-repeated words "I don't know" because I don't; because what is there to know about death? There's nothing, because we only know what's here, but the side of life. Beth and I talked for forty minutes, and after we...Click. I thought of how I could express myself as a strong writer, in and of the creation you've seen above. There's only one thing, that I would explicitly steal, maybe two things if you include the parts about autumn, Stevens' poem, rhyming my lines' final words with Stevens' end words, that's all because mine is writ in rough [iambic?] pentameter, but understand this I deny that he had any influence on me. My influence is Eleanor Stilwell, whom I dearly thank and love and may she, yes you Grammie, rest in peace.

Disorderly enrichment

"a sound beyond any giving of the ear..."
Last week in class we heard Lace's backstory, and, along with what she said in her blog, it got me to thinking about disorder. The idea of disorder is conversely, as Stevens does, an idea of order.
As Stevens says in The Figure of Youth as a Virile Poet, "virtue in the midst of indulgence and order in disorder that is involved in the idea of virility." Disorder is simply another sense of arranging ideas and chaos, creating order. For example, when someone who's a synesthetic (involuntarily mixing their perceptive senses) then they have a "disorder," but this disorder is almost a learning method, and when used correctly in the imagination then the subject is more memorable by means of making, for example, a story more vivid and fantastic. Synesthesia is a conceptual tool we attempted to understand and even develop for Oral Traditions class because in the imagination we can transform the word "tree" into a yellow umbrella with orange "leaves" shaped as raindrops splashing the ponds of gray "grass" at the tree's base. Our previous idea of order, being a simple tree, becomes more unforgettable.
Bringing me back to Lace's story; In her blog she mentions that she does not enjoy reading poetry but very much likes writing it, which seems a bit odd (but oddly relatable, too). Not only that, but it got me thinking - and I'll rewrite this question straight out of my notebook:
When you cannot hear sound, but at one time could, would/does it become second nature for you to replace the them with pictures?
I thought this because when you're deaf then you cannot experience euphony, except in Lace's unique case those left existing inside your memory, but you can experience the beauty of sight. Do some words look prettier than others, and if so does that make them more prone to manifest in your mind as a picture? And if all is so then could this be a possible beginning for developing synesthetic traits?
Nextly, if Lace and probably most others in our class enjoys writing poetry then it's easier to visualize a setting and story with her own words on paper than to read those visuals, an act involving recreating the poet's vision via the sight and sound of their words.
Then again imagine having no ability to hear and you're sitting down reading some poem; Imagine, does this "disorder" force the mind to reorder and redistribute the sense of hearing into the other four senses, contributing to the difficulty in reading poetry? When reading rhyming does the sense of sight analyze an attribute which should be heard? It depends. Or, because I assume the experience changes altogether, does this make a difference? I'm not sure.
So I suppose what I thought about most is, in general, how is the beauty in poetry interpreted, understood, and appreciated on a macro level, and how can a Joe or Jane approach the best mindset when it comes to either reading or creating poetry?
Furthermore, does the suppression of sound make words appear more vivid or feel less rhythmic or vice versa or anything else? It could go any way.
Lastly, I can only imagine that Lace has reinvented herself, from her approach to life to her understanding for poetry, words, literature, speaking, music, etc. between her transcendence from an early audible life through her moment of silence all the way to her hearing's return. I can only imagine that this "disorder" has taken away some things but is mostly guilty of an utterly enriching contribution to a new idea of order.

Two or Three Ideas

Notes:
He's saying that there are two types of poets, the ones who just think, go, and scribe and there are those who are timorous with words, in that, "If one keeps in mind the fact that most poets who have something to say are content with what they say and that most poets who have little or nothing to say are concerned primarily with the way in which they say it"
This gets me thinking about the film Finding Forrester (I highly recommend it) where a young, brilliant, high school student and aspiring writer befriends an older well-renowned recluse novelist who together give each other input on how to  write well. What young Jamal learns from old William in the movie is how to create his style.
Just sit and go. Don't think too deeply (at first) because that step comes after you actually have something written down. I'll find for y'all that specific scene.

"Style is not something applied. It is something inherent, something that permeates."

But style is not something that is easy to grasp. It's about trial and error and built with heuristic practice.
Ain't it a coincidence that Jamal the student's last name is Wallace, too. Hmm..

Then, from this movie, I get thinking about inner-city life in New York.
"It is their style that makes them gods, not merely privileged beings."
This quote and that film get me thinking on a tangent about a different breed of poetry, rap music, specifically Wu-Tang Clan and Busta Rhymes because these rappers curiously enough call others "God," referring to themselves or others outside the music, in their lyrics as if they're extraordinary individuals, but what's really going on is their complementing one another, or not [depending on the rap's target audience]. But it's true that their style is inherent, but they're not naturally gifted in public communication. They needed training and polishing.
For more style points see page 844.
"The unity of style and the poem itself is a unity of language and life that exposes both in a supreme sense."
Funny how supremacy is commonly brought up, and while I'm on rapper I might as well inform everyone of these specific groups religious affiliation, a sect off the Nation of Islam called "The Nation of Gods and Earths". Some of their most important teachings are called, coincidentally, the "Supreme Alphabet" and "Supreme Mathematics." Take a look further if you're interested here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nation_of_Gods_and_Earths
Anywho, got kind of sidetracked, but here are some quotes from Stevens that can speak for themselves:
"we think of Jove, while we take him for granted as the symbol of omnipotence"
"The people, not the priests, made the gods."

"One of the irrelevancies is the romantic...It can be said of the romantic, just as it can be said of the imagination, that it can never effectively touch the same thing twice in the same way."
"A poem is a restricted creation of the imagination. The gods are the creation of the [accumulation of] imagination at it utmost."


And finally this is the quote that caught my attention because it almost downplays the art of literary studies because, naturally, people cannot be fully satisfied by, say, one be-all, end-all heroic poem [which Stevens talks about in The Figure of Youth...]
"By detached, I mean the unsuccessful, the ineffective, the arbitrary, the literary, the non-umbilical, that which in its high degree would still be words."
Ain't that unusual to think of our studies as ineffective and arbitrary and all of the above [especially literary], but maybe that's not what he means and what I'm saying is a mere misread.

The Figure of Youth as a Virile Poet

Notes:
"I feel that the universe of being is too vast to be comprehended even by the greatest sons of Adam." -Henry Bradley
Your poetry, words tending towards miscomprehension, is the groundwork of your philosophy and a portal into the intimate imaginative inner-working world.

Official view of being = philosophic truth? No. Why? "In philosophy we attempt to approach truth through the reason. Obviously this is a statement of convenience."
Why not? "If we say that in poetry we attempt to approach the truth through imagination, this, too, is a statement of convenience."
So what then? Poetic truth equates to philosophic truth.

Solid thoughts with underwhelming elaboration and lackluster manifestation are the onset of anxiety and therefore give little contribution to the art in the land of lore.
"If an imaginative idea does not satisfy the imagination, our expectation of it is not fulfilled."
Either compete or concede.
"This is an illustration. It seems to elementary, from this point of view, that the poet, in order to fulfill himself, must accomplish a poetry that satisfies both reason and the imagination."

Strides must be taken during the journey, from womb to tomb or from child to adult or from naivety to maturity or whatever you want to call it.
"...poetry partakes of what may be called the tendency to become literature. Life itself partakes of this tendency, which is a phase of the growth of sophistication."
But those strides must sometimes be sidesteps so there's a problem to solve, because how do you know you're sophisticated unless you were first young, before you got blemishes.

I don't get what he's saying there, but there's something here: "if the end of the philosopher is despair, the end of the poet is fulfillment"
Anyone, enlighten me.

Where does your voice come from, your arrogance and pride and confidence and...
"without indirect egotism there can be no poetry. There can be poetry without the personality of the poet, and that, quite simply, is why the definition of poetry has not been found and why, in short, there is none."
These "bad" qualities are those that push you to something that you're not as a person, which appears as new life on the page. Once you break out of your head as a writer then you're writing for others satisfaction, too.
Thus, as we believe that society's savior will be reborn and return to the people..."the poet who writes the heroic poem that will satisfy all there is of us an all of us in time to come, will accomplish it by the power of his reason, the force of his imagination and, in addition, the effortless and inescapable process of his own individuality."

An analogous fun fact: "If a man's nerves shrink from loud sounds, then they are quite likely to shrink from strong colors"

Metamorphosis from the get go is utilizing any sort of literary trope or method. I think of those storytellers whose stories in reality are unrealistic, they're a lie, but what would be the quality of their stories be like if they didn't accept this standpoint.
"To describe it by exaggerating it, he shares the transformation, not to say apotheosis, accomplished by the poem."
Where's the story's fun when there's no hyperbole, and when that hyperbole is massively accepted and an accumulation of the masses opinion stacks up as a movement then,
"if we say that the idea of God is merely a poetic idea, even if the supreme poetic idea"
It's an imaginative revolution which installed the gods, whose back-stories are every bit as true as
any other study or history.
"It is as if we said that end of logic, mathematics, physics, reason and imagination is all one."
That's the cataclysmic ending of it all when there's an elimination of all inquiry because all our mysteries have been solved, but they won't anytime soon...or ever...because we'll always be thinkers.
"[The poet] must create his unreal out of what is real." See 681, too.
And the poet isn't restricted to poetry, cookie-cutter definitions of poetry with rhythm and rhyme with this and that nuance, because prose is poetry.
"Poetry is the voice of religion, prophecy, mythology, history, national life and inexplicably, for him, of literature."
Writing itself is a poetic act, and the manifestation of the imagination is abstract and therefore poetry because, as Mr. Stevens says, there's no universally accepted definition of poetry.

Our imagination accumulates and manifests outside the mind.
"few people realize that they are looking at the world of their own thoughts and the world of their own feelings."
Imagination becomes a shared reality in and of the essence of things, from inventions to regrown trees.
How is it shared? Well, as Stevens says, quoting, "'I am the truth, since I am part of what is real, but neither more nor less than those around me'"
Then he concludes The Figure of Youth as a Virile Poet with,
"I am the truth but the truth of that imagination of life in which with unfamiliar motion and manner you guide me in those exchanges of speech in which your words are mine, mine yours."

Wallace Stevenduced Poetry Produced

A prelude to Steven's "The Figure of The Youth as Virile Poet"
Here I present to you a short compilation from the past week...

His and Yours As Mine

So I said, 'why not?'
Confide in your thoughts
So here's what I got.
Hope you're impressed
And anxiousness
Puts to the test
Those fluent
Influence
Since no sense
Is made
Without
Cool aid
Sugar-coated word of mouth.

She's a transient and he don't fancy it
Because she keeps on fleeting, he thinks they'll stop meeting.
So here's what I pictured, and know there ain't much thought
Put into this that's scriptured, but get this, here's what I got.
It's the A-B-C, D-E-eFlowing quite swell on riverbanks from floating
Yellow lemon lime stone tributaries. Mellow. Tubular. You done son? Yes please.
Four down gotta elaborate, describe more shit around the place, now where am I?
Lag, the backyard boi, quit looking so high as a fawn lawning so stagnant a vibe.
Lying there as if you a bull with horns bearing the weakness of loss, pivitol
You did it all done it all and mourned too, rid the bullshit as if writ it all.
Prescripted and all or fail, perform, and unveil your flaw and flail about
So all can see your one trail down worn, entrance only the maize's stalk it stout.
The labyrinth's thickness 'twines my senses seven,
Imagination sickness 'bines ma-sensa heaven.

Whip yur scripture out richer, full, thick, and stout
Disillusion dis fusion of lucre and sweetness
Dispelled inclusion of base above the fleeting mess
Lost. Hush, the bush rustles so pleasant
The pheasant not gone but turnt and tossed
Topsy turve, as the ears steer clear of the eyes
In swerve. The image put forth, believe it not,
The learned service is crude to the blinkless
Who think less and earn more slower, in turn
The balance is in bloom. Knowledge, got some?
Blossom, by ear, listen and void mispells,
Pleasure's endeared to the mind irrawed, as
Nails clipped, the saws of the past are claws as
Veils stripped.

Follow following filling full whole hollow, not so no more,
Swallow stalling mauling bull sullen as a bear hibernating
In its lair, full satisfaction fall dream action vacating
The void the hole ensnared. Poetic appetite impaired,

Context: Valley Candle, The Wind Shifts

There are a couple contexts I'd like to conjure for a couple Harmonium poems.

Valley Candle
My candle burned alone in an immense valley.
Beams of the huge night converged upon it,
Until the wind blew.
Then beams of the huge night
Converged upon its image,
Until the wind blew.

My page is not white, not all white, it is gray given the amount of words, a manifestation of ink. My page becomes brighter and brighter from all of the gleaming blackness filling the emptiness. The keys trigger that trigger and that that and hereafter wherever my pages goes, until discontent hits. Suddenly my page is whitening and darkens. The lack of black from the gust of backspacing blows the content off the page from the hit of discontent. There's no going back because the winded anxieties are chaotic. Then, thoughts for the page are spotted not so far off. The light in the darkness is just bright enough and I start to write. I start to write and my page is not white, not all white, it is gray again. But for how long? The wind is picking up again.

The Wind Shifts
This is how the wind shifts:
Like the thoughts of an old human,
Who still thinks eagerly
And despairingly.
The wind shifts like this:
Like a human without illusions,
Who still feels irrational things within her.
The wind shifts like this:
Like humans approaching proudly,
Like humans approaching angrily.
This is how the wind shifts:
Like a human, heavy and heavy,
Who does not care.

I see all generations present, and I see city hall. The people who show are of so few kinds and their minds are not much hidden behind blinds, except by the weighty apathetic one sitting in a street-side chair, unsettled in his comfort yet not willing to move inside the building and unseat his stilling.
Although those heading to the polls are set in their choice, they've got to be quiet with their voice. They hint with an ever-changing draft; east, west, north, south, and all else in-between, inside, the civilized, the wild, and out. I can see them all walking off the walls, each face is placed upon the lot of many illusory bodies. People are repeated and seen in passing or as their seated.
We see those approaching the polls, the grimacing grouches follow patiently the broad-shouldered stiff-upper-lippy patriots, and each are encroaching their opinion as politicians poaching the state's supposed, shared dominion.
Then, as we'll find last, in the corners surrounding there are the old-timers believing in a reemerging youth, unconvinced by past-times' truths because like their yellow and white-dusted lawns in November, can they really believe that the pawns can behold a movement unforeseen?
Let's see which way the wind shifts...

Carlos Among the Candles

Everything starts out in the dark, always, and then as in every play the "curtain" is lifted revealing the beginning. Here in Stevens second, much shorter, play Carlos is revealed by a candle (a trend, yes).
Could this play's starting point commence without a curtain? I think so.
Anyways, Carlos says:
"How the solitude of this candle penetrates me! I light the candle in the darkness. It fills the darkness with solitude, which becomes my own." (615)
Fascinating how he describes the lit setting as solitude, as if when there's merely darkness the solitude is nonexistent. Light gives Carlos his own little bubble, and he takes advantage alright by dancing or more descriptively "(He sighs. After a pause he pirouettes, and then continues)" (616).
With more light the scene is vivified. Carlos lights a second candle and says:
"The solitude dissolves...The light of the two candles has a meaning different from the light of one..." (616)
When I read this bifocal vision popped into my head, except that the vision is not that of eyesight, but that each candlelight is itself an eye. Then Carlos finds more and more candles given the expanding light and "dissolving solitude". His thought process and dialogue development is interesting as more and more candles are added to the mix.
Note: each ellipsis below, only in the following quote, signifies Carlos lighting another candle and a brief break in script.
After lighting a third he says,
"...one more candle would turn this formative elegance into...suggestion of luxury into...the beginning of magnificence into...the beginning of splendor. Truly, I am a modern."
He dances around the room more given there is more room from more light and less solitude.
Next, after finishing his dance, is probably my favorite line in the play.
"To have changed so often and so much...Six candles burn like and adventure that has been completed. They are established. They are a city...six common candles...seven...Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve." (617)
He's losing all sense of solitude and gaining, maybe a glimpse of, freedom until tiptoeing to center stage. Slowly hereafter the candles are blown out, and another great line which I'll end ambiguously on is after he's blown out some of them and has, I believe, seven left.
Note: def: Pleiades(pl-dz, pl-) pl.n.

1. Greek Mythology The seven daughters of Atlas (Maia, Electra, Celaeno, Taygeta, Merope, Alcyone, and Sterope), who were metamorphosed into stars.

2. An open star cluster in the constellation Taurus, consisting of several hundred stars, of which six are visible to the naked eye.

From http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Pleiades

"It is like the six Pleiades, and the hidden one, that makes them seven.
(He blows out another candle.)
It is like the seven Pleiades, and the hidden one, that makes them six." (619)
Ha! Stars, of course. The sun is a star, eh, interesante.

Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise

As the sun comes up so does Anna from behind the bushes, or, in the symbolic nature of the brush, what the travelers think of as a curtain. I thought of it as a displaced campfire tale, those good ones that come to life and we hear about them but never seem to witness.

"First Traveler:......
Just as the young gentleman
Was alone without her:
Three beggars, you see,
Begging for one another. (The two negros and the three travelers jump to their feet when a corpse hanging from a branch is revealed)
The young gentleman of the ballad.

Third Chinese:
And the end of the ballad.
Take away the bushes.

Second Chinese:
Death, the hermit,
Needs no candle
In his hermitage. (candles and lanterns are extinguished as the bushes are removed)

Second Chinese:
Is that you, Anna?"
(Stevens 610-11)

With their collective imaginative power the song comes to life--reality and imagination are indistinguishable for a time, and even Anna says, "It will soon be sunrise" (612) even though through my first read of this play I thought the sun had already come up.
But did it, to which sun is she referring? Or is Anna's sun the sun of her story? Or is Anna part of the Travelers' world?

Wallace Stevens is obsessed with this idea of light, light from the sun and candles and lanterns and even the color gold, and the idea of light is experimented with throughout the course of his three plays in our Bible.

Some last explanatory words from Stevens found in "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction":
"There is a project for the sun. The sun
Must bear no name, gold flourisher, but be
In the difficulty of what it is to be." (330)

A quick connection

I had reached my destination fifteen minutes too early. It was before my first Tuesday class, being Economics 101, that I decided to pop a squat on Leon Johnson's lawn and open Nabokov's Pale Fire which I had started on Sunday. I began Canto III and several pages later came across a passage our class might find applicable and interesting.
So it goes:

"Patly I fell. My heart had stopped to beat,
It seems, and several moments passed before
It heaved and went on trudging to a more
Conclusive destination. Give me now
Your full attention.
                            I can't tell you how
I knew--but I did know that I had crossed
The border. Everything I loved was lost
But no aorta could report regret.
A sun of rubber was convulsed and set;
And blood-back nothingness began to spin
A system of cells interlinked within
Cells interlinked within cells interlinked
Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct
Against the dark, a tall white fountain played.

I realized, of course, that it was made
Not of our atoms; that the sense behind
The scene was not our sense. In life, the mind
Of any man is quick to recognize
Natural shams, and then before his eyes
The reed becomes a bird, the knobby twig
An inchworm, and the cobra head, a big
Wickedly folded moth. But in the case
Of my white fountain what it did replace
Perceptually was something that, I felt,
Could be grasped only by whoever dwelt
In the strange world where I was a mere stray.

And presently I saw it melt away:"
                                                    (page 59)

After reading Santayana and remembering that Nabokov had synesthesia the passage was enriched.