Martin Robertson

Now and Then

Music is Landscape

Music is landscape:

wide grass

melts to a skyline,

dips to a stream.

Landscape is music:

the heart’s dream

weaves with what we see

and beguiles us.

Nature is nothing,

unformed, till an eye

prints an image

on a prepared brain.

Heart’s feeling

transfigures again

that transposed vision

of actuality.

What is real?

Nature is blind

—blank blackness

the sun’s light

until kindled

by act of sight.

Sight is silence

without feeling mind.

We bring our own lights

into this dark,

and in the glance, dance of

the beams they throw

crystals glisten in answer

which could not know

till then they were other

than the other rock.