Page 82

This second "Gone" sharpens the room into perilous stillness: wind is denied as willow, paper moves, keys hold the eye, and even a slight shift risks falling out of time.

The crossed-out phrase after the willow line makes the page visibly revise itself away from one image and toward the bare fact of paper moving. The poem treats self-consciousness as dangerous, since turning around to watch oneself confirms being in the wrong time. Its final warning gives imagination no easy freedom; it becomes the tense balance required not to fall.

This second 'Gone' sharpens the room into perilous stillness, denying one image for a barer one: 'The window wind is not a willow / touched that blows / It is paper that moves'. Looking down 'at keys' with 'the world... not around', it makes self-consciousness dangerous -- 'You can't turn around / and watch yourself / be in the wrong time' -- and ends with imagination as a tense balance rather than freedom: 'if you move an inch / you will fall'.