New England Diary

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'The town is drowned'

"The Three Trees,'' Rembrandt etching

"Someone on Walnut Hill has taken a picture,

reducing the town by distance to design

under an arch of sky whose empty vastness

the ample clouds can only underline

 

All that is left of landscape lies at the bottom

of a sea of summer air: the town is drowned

under that sky, remote above the buildings

that in the picture scarcely clear the ground.''

 

-- From "The Prospect Before Us,'' by Constance Carrier