William Stafford

Here you will find the Poem Bi-Focal of poet William Stafford

Bi-Focal

Sometimes up out of this land 
a legend begins to move. 
Is it a coming near 
of something under love? 


Love is of the earth only, 
the surface, a map of roads 
leading wherever go miles 
or little bushes nod. 


Not so the legend under, 
fixed, inexorable, 
deep as the darkest mine 
the thick rocks won't tell. 


As fire burns the leaf 
and out of the green appears 
the vein in the center line 
and the legend veins under there, 


So, the world happens twice? 
once what we see it as; 
second it legends itself 
deep, the way it is.