But sometimes everything i write
with the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, garish, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralyzed by fact.

All's misalliance,
Yet why not say what happened?
pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination.

We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.

robert lowell,
epilogue.