"The Intention of Things"
Listen to David Ferry read this poem.
The death that lives in the intention of things
To have a meaning of some sort or other,
That means to come to something in the end,
It is the death that lives not finding the meaning
Of this or that object as it moves among them
Uncertainly, moving among the shadows,
The things that are like shadows, shadows of things,
The things the shadows of shadows, all in the effort
To put off the death that we are coming to.
The intention makes its way among its moments,
Choosing this object or that, uncertainly,
Somebody's cock or cunt, or the leaves of a tree
On a summer night in a landscape somewhere else,
Under which something happened that made it different;
It is seeking to find the meaning of what they are.
But it moves uncertainly among them, the shadows,
The things that are like shadows, putting off
The death that is coming, that we are coming to.
David Ferry is a poet, a translator of poetry, and a professor of English at Wellesley College.
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