Bi-Focal

By William E. Stafford 1914–1993

Sometimes up out of this land

a legend begins to move.

Is it a coming near

of something under love?

Love is of the earth only,

the surface, a map of roads

leading wherever go miles

or little bushes nod.

Not so the legend under,

fixed, inexorable,

deep as the darkest mine

the thick rocks won't tell.

As fire burns the leaf

and out of the green appears

the vein in the center line

and the legend veins under there,

So, the world happens twice—

once what we see it as;

second it legends itself

deep, the way it is.

William Stafford, “Bi-Focal” from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1998 by William Stafford. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.

Source: The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 1998)

Biography

"If you have been wondering where the articulate, readable poems have gone in the last third of the 20th century, you might start with [William] Stafford," declares Victor Howes of the Christian Science Monitor. A pacifist and one of "the quiet of the land," as he often describes himself, Stafford is known for his unique method of composition, his soft-spoken voice, and his independence from social and literary expectations. As

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