Max Schmitt in a Single Scull
(by Richmond Lattimore, 1906 - 1984) How shall the river learn its winter look, steel and brown, how shall we upon our moving mirror here discern the way light falls on bridge and bare tree except as in the painting? Cold fires burn autumn into winter. Here still the pencilled sculls dip, precise arms beat the water-circles of their progress. Skill arrowheads elegance. City Line to 30th Street is forever, Eakins, your Schuylkill and ours. What you have done made us see what you saw. Thus our eyes after your image catch the steel and brown of rowers on the water, improvise by you our colors in the winter sun. (from Sestina for a Far-Off Summer: Poems 1957-1962, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962) |