to ponder . . .

The author of genius does keep till his last breath
the spontaneity, the ready sensitiveness, of a child,
the "innocence of eye" that means
so much to the painter, the ability to respond
freshly and quickly to new scenes, and to old scenes
as though they were new;
to see traits and characteristics
as though each were new-minted from the hand of God
instead of sorting them quickly
into dusty categories and pigeon-holing them
without wonder or surprise;
to feel situations so immediately and keenly
that the word "trite" has hardly any meaning for him;
and always to see "the correspondences between things"
of which Aristotle spoke two thousand years ago.

Dorothea Brande