Classic Poem

Physics can't compass this:
how the land, far off there,
falls away westward, hill
behind hill, immaterial
with distance, azure as air;
the fact, I mean, that it is

immaterial, in the sense
(sight) that the entire
blue tumult enters the mind
instantly, that we find
the space — or it doesn't require
space, having no substance;

nor can words, our terrible need
sometimes for this aliment
that depends on or is distance:
its pure forms, its silence,
and extinction of incident,
its nature-to-intercede. . . .

" Why is it we leave always
what we love most? " The thought,
so far from the sick heart
of the case, can become art;
God knows, the goodbyes were not.
In distance. Distance. Such grace.