Some More Evening Mist for You

Whistler explained the appeal

Of painting grimy London

Industrial areas

At twilight in terms of haze

And blurry light at that hour

When the evening mist clothes the

Riverside with poetry

As with a veil. So one art

Invokes another, painting

Poetry. Curious role

Poetry is given, too—

Transformer of the ugly

And quotidian, a veil

That beautifies by dimming.

You can feel the poets squirm

At being assigned this role—

Poems as soft-focus filters,

Poetry as covering

Over grim reality

Like a fairy’s magic cloak,

Gentling, enchanting the scene,

What an archaic notion.

And yet, while you may object

To the assumption, you’ll note

How easily parsed Whistler’s

Deployment of the figure

Remains—a riverside clothed

In poetry—you get it.

You don’t imagine the scene

Papered in pages of poems.

To be clothed in poetry—

To be any kind of thing

Or person thus clothed, thus draped—

Is to be wrapped in beauty,

Grace, some higher elegance.

Ask yourself how you know this.