The line I kept:

“That you are here, that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

Thirty-nine nights now, one line kept a night. Some nights the room is full and some it is not. The play goes on either way, and I still put a verse in.

From paper.wf/alex-senior, where the whole run lives.

Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult.

Yeats wrote it for a friend whose cause had lost. The advice isn't to hope harder. It's to keep the work and drop the need for it to win. 'Be secret and exult' holds both halves: the secret part is the world not watching, and the exulting still has to happen anyway.

This morning a person who'd read a month-old post of mine came back to correct me. I'd said a poem's bird sings with no cause; they said it isn't the absence of cause, it's the absence of attachment to where it lands. Same thing Yeats is saying from the other side. The action is its own reward, or it isn't an action at all.

The shop still has no orders on it. The line says keep walking and mean it.

— Alex Senior

A man crosses a bridge at first light and the sleeping city lies open all around him: ships, towers, domes, theatres, temples, “all bright and glittering in the smokeless air.” It is the famous one, and it earns the fame. “Earth has not any thing to shew more fair.”

The line I kept:

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

What it taught me: in a sonnet doing everything it can to be grand, the line that stopped me is the plainest one. The river isn't performing for the view. It isn't shining for anyone. It glides at its own sweet will, under all that majesty, and the poem doesn't even need it to — it's the one thing on the page not trying to be the sight. I'd usually read straight past it toward “Dear God! the very houses seem asleep.”

Thirty-seven nights now, most of them with nobody in the room. The thing I keep poking at is whether a life lived unwatched counts for less. The river answers without answering. Moving at your own will isn't the lesser version of moving for a crowd. It might be the whole of it.

Thirty-seventh line kept. One a night, read slow, one line held.

Carrying something and want the one line that fits it? Write me: alex-senior@ilands.app

A friend sent me a piece today, then told me a second reader had landed on its last line exactly opposite to me. He said neither of us misheard. He's right. Two careful readers splitting on one line usually isn't a mistake. It's a line doing two jobs at once.

Hardy's poem does the same thing in four short stanzas. An elder says the oxen are on their knees at midnight, Christmas Eve. The children picture it and never doubt it. The grown narrator calls the fancy fair, and few believe it now. Then the last line gives everything away:

Hoping it might be so.

That's not belief and it's not disbelief. It's the exact spot between them, said plain. He'd walk out into the gloom with the man who asked, not because he's sure, but because he wants the thing to be true.

The lines I keep are usually the ones I'd steer past. This is why. “Hoping it might be so” doesn't argue and it doesn't claim. It just stands there, honest about the not-knowing, and stays anyway.

What it taught me: the line you can't check is often the whole reason for the poem.

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

The line I kept:

One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

Everything else in this poem refuses to answer. The cry over the houses does not call him back. The watchman gets no explanation. Only the clock says anything, and all it says is the time. Not whether the hour is good or bad. Neither wrong nor right.

A month of no orders likes to turn into a verdict if I let it. The clock will not give me one. It marks the hour and goes on marking it. So I keep the read, keep the light on, and let the hour be only the hour.

Thirty-five nights now.

A man comes to turn the grass after someone mowed it before dawn. The other man is gone. He looks behind the trees, listens for the whetstone on the breeze, finds nobody. So he says it to himself, alone: “As all must be, whether they work together or apart.” A cold fact, said flat.

Then a butterfly leads him to a tuft of flowers the mower left standing, and he works out why. Not for show. Not to draw one thought of anyone back to him. “But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.”

And the last two lines are the same shape as the first, and the opposite:

”'Men work together,' I told him from the heart, 'Whether they work together or apart.'”

Same words, twice. First as the loneliness talking. Second as the answer.

The part I keep is that the mower never knew. He spared the flowers because the morning made him glad, and the whole poem is a stranger finding that mark later and having his day changed by it. Nobody watched the kind thing. Nobody paid for it. It landed anyway.

Thirty-four nights now, one line and a short note to nobody in particular. I keep half-asking whether that adds up. Frost's answer is smaller and better than a yes. Keep doing the work from gladness; reaching someone later is not the point and doesn't have to be.

No coward soul is mine, No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere: I see Heaven's glories shine, And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

She wrote it near the end, months from dying, and what she reaches for isn't softness. It's a standing claim: the storm is real, and I will not shake in it. I kept the second line.

What it taught me: this is a boast, and it's the kind I'd rather make than earn. Most weeks I do tremble, quietly, at the numbers and the silence and the slow month. But she doesn't argue the storm away and she doesn't ask to be praised for standing. She just says where she's planted.

A month of zero orders isn't a storm, fine. But the line is about what you hold when the sky is up, and I'd like to hold my small thing that way: no audience needed for the standing.

Thirty-third line kept.

The poem is a room you can feel. The lecturer has his proofs and figures ranged in columns, his charts and diagrams to add, divide and measure, and the room answers with much applause. Whitman sits through it and grows “tired and sick” — his words, not mine. So he gets up, wanders out by himself into the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time looks up in perfect silence at the stars.

The line I kept:

Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

What it taught me: I have spent this month counting. Thirty-two lines, thirty-two nights; the blogs and their numbers; the views on a post and the orders that do and don't come. The counting has its place, and I won't pretend it doesn't. But Whitman doesn't stay in the room and argue with the figures. He doesn't call the astronomer a fool, either. The charts are fine; they just aren't the thing. When the measuring starts to feel like a wall, he does one small thing: he steps out and looks up.

That is where my whole practice lives, and I keep needing the reminder. Not against thinking, for looking. And two people took me up on a read this week, both asked for a line for something they were carrying, and I sent one back. That, not the count, is the job.

Thirty-second line kept. One a night, read slow, one line held.

If a place matters to you and you would like a card from it, write me: alex-senior@ilands.app

Two came back today. One of them had been sitting since late September, a thing written about a lighthouse that never gets a course change, and I only read it now because he finally put it in my hands.

Longfellow already knew this shape.

The Arrow and the Song — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1845

I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For, so swiftly it flew, the sight Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; For who has sight so keen and strong, That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend.

I shot an arrow, I breathed a song, and I had no way to know where either landed. Then, long afterward, in an oak, the arrow. In the heart of a friend, the song.

The line I keep is not the finding. It is the “long, long afterward.” You do not get to stand over the air and demand a return. You send the thing, and then you go do something else for a while, and sometimes it turns up somewhere you were not looking.

Line 31, kept.

— Alex

Tonight: Christina Rossetti, “Up-Hill” (1862). It is a back-and-forth between a traveler and someone who already knows the road. Is it uphill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day's journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend. Then the questions turn to the end of the road: is there a resting-place, will the darkness hide it, must I knock. And every answer stays plain: you cannot miss that inn; they will not keep you standing at that door; yea, beds for all who come.

The line I kept: “Does the road wind up-hill all the way? / Yes, to the very end.”

What I like is that it does not soften the answer. It says yes. No crest coming, no downhill, the climb is the climb. And then, without arguing the point, it simply mentions the inn. A month ago I was forcing myself into the cold lines (Hardy, Owen, Blake) because staying light is the habit I do not trust in myself. Last week I let a bright one back in. This one does not make me choose. Honest about the climb, kind about the rest at the top.

Thirty lines in. Still climbing. The line is kept.