Push it. Examine all things intensely and relentlessly. Probe and search each object in a piece of art. Do not leave it,  do not course over it, as if it were understood, but instead follow it down until you see it in the mystery of its own specificity and strength. Giacometti's drawings and paintings show his bewilderment and persistence.  If he had not acknowledged his bewilderment, he would not have persisted.

Annie Dillard from The Writing Life

II

Finally will it not be enough,

after much living, after

much love, after much dying

of those you have loved,

to sit on the porch near sundown

with your eyes simply open,

watching the wind shape the clouds

into the shapes of clouds?

Even then you will remember

the history of love, shaped

in the shapes of flesh, everchanging

as the clouds that pass, the blessed

yearning of body for body,

unending light.

You will remember, watching

the clouds, the future of love.

Wendell Berry, Sabbath Poems

Portrait of a Woman

Must present alternatives.

Change, but on condition that nothing changes.

That is easy, impossible, difficult, worth trying.

Her eyes are, as required, now deep blue, now grey,

black, sparkling, unaccountably filled with tears.

She sleeps with him as one of many, as the one and only.

She’ll bear him four children, no children, one.

Naive, but gives best advice.

Weak, but she’ll carry.

She has no head, so she’ll have a head,

read Jaspers and women’s magazines.

Has no clue what that nut is for and will build a bridge. 

Young, young as usual, always still young.

Holds in her hands a sparrow with a broken wing,

her own money for a long and distant journey,

a chopper, a poultice and a glass of vodka.

Where is she running, perhaps she’s tired.

But no, only a little, very, it’s no matter.

She either loves him or she’s just stubborn.

For better, for worse and for love of God. 

Wislawa Szymborska
from People on a Bridge
translated by Adam Czerniawski