'The same degree of consciousness'

 

“Poetry brings all possible experience to the same degree: a degree in the consciousness beyond which the consciousness itself cannot go.” – Laura Riding

 

A champion of free verse, Riding was born in New York City on Jan. 16, 1901.  Also a critic, essayist, novelist and short story writer, she wrote the first of her many hundreds of poems in the mid-1920s with her first poetry collection, The Close Chaplet, published in 1926.  One of the most popular poets in her lifetime (she died in 1991), her works were published in a dozen languages and remain among the most studied and reviewed.   For Saturday’s Poem, here is Riding’s,

 

                                                            Yes and No

 

Across a continent imaginary
Because it cannot be discovered now
Upon this fully apprehended planet—
No more applicants considered,
Alas, alas—

Ran an animal unzoological,
Without a fate, without a fact,
Its private history intact
Against the travesty
Of an anatomy.

Not visible not invisible,
Removed by dayless night,
Did it ever fly its ground
Out of fancy into light,
Into space to replace
Its unwritable decease?

Ah, the minutes twinkle in and out
And in and out come and go
One by one, none by none,
What we know, what we don't know.