[Philip Quinlan]

In my relentless quest for the perfect poem (and some sense of the criteria for same) I have so far discovered in umpteen years of disappointment about half a dozen that fit the bill for me.

I wanted to share one here to see if others see it the same way I do (unlikely, but still...) and maybe pick it apart some, or offer other poems for the title?

This one is probably top of my shortlist

The Eyes of the Drowned Watch Keels Going Over
(William Merwin)

Where the light has no horizons we lie.
It dims into depth not distance. It sways
Like hair, then we shift and turn over slightly.
As once on the long swing under the trees
In the drowse of summer we slid to and fro
Slowly in the soft wash of the air, looking
Upward through the leaves that turned over and back
Like hands, through the birds, the fathomless light,
Upward. They go over us swinging
Jaggedly, laboring between our eyes
And the light. Churning their wrought courses
Between the sailing birds and the awed eyes
Of the fish, with the grace of neither, nor with
The stars' serenity that they follow.
Yet the light shakes around them as they go.
Why? And why should we, rocking on shoal-pillow,
With our eyes cling to them, and their wakes follow,
Who follow nothing? If we could remember
The stars in their clarity, we might understand now
Why we pursued stars, to what end our eyes
Fastened upon stars, how it was that we traced
In their remote courses not their own fates but ours

Apart from saying that the sharp-eyed will spot the reference to Dante I will say nothing more at this stage pending any responses from others.

Philip