“… a lifetime is too narrow
to understand it all, beginning with the huge
rockshelves that underlie all that life.
…
No one ever told us we had to study our lives,
make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history
or music, that we should begin
with the simple exercises first
and slowly go on trying
the hard ones, practicing till strength
and accuracy became one with the daring
to leap into transcendence…
…
But there come times—perhaps this is one of them—
when we have to take ourselves more seriously or die,
when we have to pull back from the incantations,
rhythms we’ve moved to thoughtlessly,
and disenthrall ourselves, bestow
ourselves to silence, or a severer listening…”
– Rich (1984)
References
Rich, A. (1984). Transcendental etude. In The fact of a doorframe: Poems selected and new 1950-1984. Norton.