I adore this, Mark. And Matt's suggestions bring up an interesting issue: the balance in a poem between striking imagery and a more leveling sort of imagery. He hesitantly calls it bland here, and others might call it cliché—. But for me it is a matter of allowing the mind settle, and thus providing an unostentatious space in which certain more prominent bits of language can leap out in aching silhouette. That line . . .
perhaps in motley, with apples and wooden toys,
. . . is certainly superb, yet I wonder if it would stand out with such force if it were surrounded by other lines of similar qualities. It's like the climactic note soaring out from an aria, a note that distinguishes itself in part by the help of a less heroic background music. I've written poems where I tried for such a note in every moment of the piece, and that is a viable approach but, equally, I think it is a creative feat to create a background landscape out of which such climactic notes can soar. In this poem I find the whole orchestration so finely tuned, and I sense it is those lower-luster moments that so skillfully move the poem along, smoothing the ground for that line's sudden crescendo. The whole poem is a state of waiting at the familiar window, facing the familiar world—all the while watching for the extraordinary. That line embodies all those expectations, thrillingly. And at the same time it helps sculpt, by contrast, the quieter tones of the quotidian embrace which, in turn, inspires such fantasies. The two moments shape one another, "roaming and return". For me it is a perfect poem.
Nemo
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