So that if it risks pleasure, if
in rising and falling succeeds
to a stillness no intent could skill—
each moment a distance and each distance
habited by accident because inhabited
by struck force— whatever pleasure it pledges
must inevitably slacken to pleasure
manifest: faint then gone then
reappearing, a sphere of stitched whiteness
quickened by adhering light,
it curves away from the imaginary line
it can never touch and toward the slipping
shadow-line of a body running
across a grassy field and holding forth
its leather mitt, slick as pitch and open
with indulgence, the five-fingered contour
framing the limit toward which all pleasure aims
so that when not if
it falls what the gloved hand holds
is not failure but the smell of grass.