This poem is taken from PN Review 7, Volume 5 Number 3, April - June 1979.

Four Poems

Robert Hass

TRANSPARENT GARMENTS

Because it is neither easy nor difficult,
because the outer dark is not passport
nor is the inner dark, the horror
held in memory as talisman. Not to go in
stupidly holding out dark as some
wrong promise of fidelity, but to go in
as one can, empty or worshipping.
White, as a proposition. Not leprous
by easy association nor painfully radiant.
Or maybe that, yes, maybe painfully.
To go into that. As: I am walking in the city
and there is the whiteness Of the houses,
little cubes of it bleaching in the sunlight,
luminous with attritions of light, the
failure of matter in the steadiness of light,
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