"Sitting on a wooden bench, looking out"

It is a summer afternoon in October.

..

The breeze picks up slightly but still steadily,
The increase in the breeze becomes the mild
Dominant event, compelling with sweet oblivious
Authority alterations in light and shadow,
Alterations in the light of the sun on the water,
Which becomes at once denser and more quietly
Excited, like a concentration of emotions ..

He is alert to savor minute distinctions.
In Lake Water, an extraordinary reflection
within the exceptional collection, Bewil-
derment, we read also of a breeze perfect-
ly steady and persistent / Blowing in to-
ward shore from the other side / Or from
the world beyond the other side; and this
is revealingly consonant with the poet's
nature as a Classicist-translator of Vir-
gil. Indeed, Lake Water follows upon both
a passage from The Aeneid between the hero
and his father, and from Georgics on Or-
pheus and Eurydice, and continues beyond
this fragment to a parting of his own, as
a figure of speech. I cite Ferry often,
and today to comprehend a picture I found
and simply like. Maybe two. Every time, I
reclaim a grounding one can recognize.



























David Ferry
Bewilderment
  New Poems and
  Translations
  Lake Water
  [fragments]
  2007
University of Chicago Press, 2012©

Édouard Boubat
Untitled lake photograph
1950s