—But there’s a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look’d upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone

—William Wordsworth, from ‘Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’

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I was a tree—the tree, the one that William look’d upon—who, until looked upon, did not speak, or at least, did not speak to poets.

I did not speak, but sing.

No, not I. There was no single I, just as there was no single field, no single tree, no singular singing, but still, a song—of which I was a part.

No. Not a part, nor apart, nor any article, no matter how affixed, no matter how indefinite.

Not until William singled me out did I signal something gone: Ah!—the infinite before, when the song, never begun, neverending, had not blinked, momentarily, out of this world, to reveal the one tree in the single field, with the lonely lyrical I, who looked, who could not stop looking, drawing down with his gaze the prisonhouse shades.

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