- Introduction
- "As Tiny Sea-Birds…"
- Ode on 30th Street Station
- Meditation from the Steps of the Art Museum
- Challenge
- Written on the Rocks, Vinal Haven, ME
- Meeting an Old Friend on the Wissahickon
- Orchestrations Walking on Delancey Street
- "The Seeing Fails…"
- An Old Man's Travelogue
- Winter Sonnet (Odd)
- Lullaby for a Cat
- Winter Song
- Tigger at the Window
- Evening Blues for Solo Guitar
- Foundling Cat
- Delancey Sreet at Noon
- Lisa Happy
- Sonnet from Exile
- Evening Encounter
- Pecking Order
- Mannequins in Nan Duskin's Window
"The Seeing Fails"
"In the prison of his days,
Teach the free man how to praise."
—Auden
The seeing fails, though sun transforms the haze
To liquid silver flecked with
colored beads;
The hearing, though the golden song that breeds
Among the leaves fills all the
forest ways.
Things that we love will come to desert days,
And wilted stubble springs from
rooted seeds.
When all our gardens grow to rusted weeds,
What will there be to see, to hear,
to praise?
The seeing fails, imprisoned in the light,
And hearing fades, a captive of
the sound.
The song remains, the dream, the memory,
To break the amber hold of sound and
sight.
Singing to stem the world's decaying round,
We learn to laugh and praise before
we die.
All work on these pages copyright © by Robert
A. Seeley
All rights reserved
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