To return to the problem at hand. What
Is there between two similar scenes, say,
The bright white and blue light of this winter
Window this afternoon, the pale grey light
Through what would seem to have been
The same window during the previous day
Of steady snow? We have established,
To our own satisfaction at least, something
Must have been exactly the same within
The continuous change seeping in
The very atoms of the sill and pane.
Any similarity requires some aspect remain
Unchanged. Now, what could that be?
Not simply any bit of matter, all having changed,
And not only the relationship still holding
Between arrangements of matter changed.
What, then? It’s not enough, even, to blame
The ever error-prone brain. Looking through
This window at a black night now that gives
Back my own familiarly similar reflection,
I may fairly say I’m missing most of the fact
And nearly all of the change. But still,
There could be no illusion of stability
Were it not that some aspects of this window
Stayed the same. I’m tempted to capitulate,
To say that what stays is an essence,
An immaterial, unenergetic something, but
That just kicks the can without solving
A thing. Persistence through change,
The persistence of change, of incomplete
But continuous, of vacillating but nonstop
Change. It can’t be change itself that’s still.
This window is the eye of the soul. No
Enumeration of its stable traits makes
A name for its stable whole. But it’s whole.
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