where everything is silent

It's frustrating to read the Collected Poems 1938 – 1983 of Sheila Wingfield and see how often she stops (how she halts either the entire poem or else a gesture of thought) once she has mentioned one of the words that meant so much to her; kindness, gentleness, or something that stands for them, such as trees, flowers, birds, nature in general; or else she brings up nobility or honour, or things that embody them, eg, ancient kings, as if she either feels or hopes that these things are so valuable that she must sabotage her own thinking forward movement so that their profundity will not be superseded by further speculation. She is moved in Thou Shalt Not Carry a Fox's Tooth (from her last book, Cockatrice & Basilisk, 1983) when she looks at a water-wagtail on a rock in a stream and decides that "such entirety | Such lack of harm" may be "a hint | Of grace". This notion of "entirety" seems to be common to all of the things she prefers - an entirely peaceful scene, or the king as an ultimate figure - an invocation of some spot beyond which she cannot go. Probably she saw herself overwhelmed and compelled to stop when she reached these points, possibly she even wrote in order to stop writing. "We wish to explore the vast domain of goodness where everything is silent," Apollinaire, La Jolie Rousse, 1917, tr. John Berger.