Via Negativa

Via Negativa

As a child
     what I loved
most of all

was going out
     at daybreak
in the fog

—stacked mist
     over the marshes
or the white

cathedral
     of the haar —
it barely

mattered
     if the path
I followed there

came to a stop
     in reed beds
or silvered willows

where something
     opened:
something like a gaze

as if the middle-ground
     I could not see were

                    not
that grim
     self-conscious sense
of being seen

the way a child is seen
     by Jesus
and his angels

                    not
the haunting
     we contrive
by going out

to where
     we don't belong
but

something else
     I couldn't say
in words

an evidence
     of grace
that makes

each living
     creature
moving in the world

so much itself
     though
interchangeable

and surely
     what I loved
was not my own

strict presence
     in a pocket
of the fog

but being there
     as everything
is there

at random,
     to be shaped
by what is not.

John Burnside, The Good Neighbour. Cape Poetry (2005)