A Certain Slant

Etched on the window were barbarous thistles of frost,

Edged everywhere in that tame winter sunlight

With pavé diamonds and fine prickles of ice

Through which a shaft of the late afternoon

Entered our room to entertain the sway

And float of moats, like tiny aqueous lives,

Then glanced off the silver teapot, raising stains

Of snailing gold upcast across the ceiling,

And bathed itself at last in the slop bucket

Where other aqueous lives, equally slow,

Turned in their sad, involuntary courses,

Swiveled in eel-green broth. Who could have known

Of any elsehwere? Even of out-of-doors,

Where the stacked firewood gleamed in drapes of glaze

And blinded the sun itself with jubilant theft,

The smooth cool plunder of celestial fire?

                                           —Anthony Hecht (1923-2004)

                                                           Anthony Hecht: Selected Poems
                                                                J. D. McClatchy, ed. 
                                                                        Alfred A. Knopf (2011)

COMMENTARY

“If the presence of the Beyond in the philosopher’s act is supposed to reveal its presence in all of the cosmic ‘things,’ why should the Parousia of Being not dethrone the intracosmic gods completely and transform them into no-gods?”

Eric Voegelin, Collected Works  vol 28: What is History and Other Late Unpublished Writings, 223.

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