I browse poetry when I’m restless. I pick up a poetry collection and move through it, seeking but not searching. I have no objective, no criteria, just a need for… something.

Something that I may not have the words to describe, even after I’ve found it.

Something that fits.

Today, the something that I found was a poem by Archibald MacLeash, an American poet whose work is new to me.

Here it is:

Ars Poetica

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement windows where the moss has grown -

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds

*

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind---

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

*

A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning glasses and two lights above the sea---

A poem should not mean
But be.

Archibald MacLeash

This poem satisfied me. I don’t understand every line. I suspect what understanding I have will change as I re-read the text. But I recognise in this poem the something I was looking for today.

As I’m sure it’s meant to, the last stanza stuck in my mind:

A poem should not mean
But be.

That got me thinking about what the something is that I’m looking for in my restless browsing of poetry. What do I want a poem to be?

The image that came to me was of walking along a pebble beach, looking for the one stone among the many that will please my eye and feel right in the palm of my hand. The something that I’m looking for is not just the poem but the finding, the meeting, the completing.

I’ve tried to say what I mean by that in the poem below.