Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 193

The Memory of the River

Is it absurd to believe the bottom
is reachable to hands desperately
stretched and seeking it? To see in the strain
grains of soft sand wet and clinging downwardly
to current- and finger-traced lines of a body
unmoved (unmoving) in motions passing
on and through the stilled silence of its whole?
To reach for this ever, albeit now
more exhaustedly? To float still, silent,
inverted yet over the quiet floor,
holding against for a moment the flow
of all that is pressing, urgent, spoken ---
So much water passes, spreads out, in waves
while so little catches, in fingers, and stays.