as if it were a scene made-up by the mind, that is not mine, but is a made place, that is mine, it is so near to the heart, an eternal pasture folded in all thought so that there is a hall therein that is a made place, created by light wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall. Wherefrom fall all architectures I am I say are likenesses of the First Beloved whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady. She it is Queen Under The Hill whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words that is a field folded. It is only a dream of the grass blowing east against the source of the sun in an hour before the sun's going down whose secret we see in a children's game of ring a round of roses told. Often I am permitted to return to a meadow as if it were a given property of the mind that certain bounds hold against chaos, that is a place of first permission, everlasting omen of what is.
by Robert Duncan, from The Opening of the Field. Copyright © 1960 by Robert Duncan. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.