I had to stop believing
in my permanence to see.
By many errors
I have learned to look for what is hidden,
hidden by what I can see,
The huge unmoving cumulus
of summer — what Jesus said,
in his father's house are many mansions,
In the lingering dusk
I love to see your pupils dilate
like something high up, falling.
Looking to see what is hidden,
forgiving myself
from before I was ready to see,
Earth will become more and more beautiful
until I can't stand it,
then it will vanish.
With no clouds in the sky,
the sky can't move.
— A cento containing lines from multiple issues of The New Yorker
and The New York Review of Books, flanking the summer solstice,
by Anna Journey, Jiordan Castle, D. Nurske, Joe Denthorne, and Shane McCrae.
