"View with a Grain of Sand"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The People on the Bridge (1986)
Context: We call it a grain of sand
but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.
It does just fine without a name,
whether general, particular,
permanent, passing,
incorrect or apt.
“The divine is everywhere, even in a grain of sand; there I represented it in the reeds.”
Quote of Friedrich on his painting Swans in the Rushes (c. 1820), as cited in "Absent Presences in Liminal Places: Murnau's Nosferatu and the Otherworld of Stoker's Dracula" by Saviour Catania in Literature Film Quarterly (2004) http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3768/is_200401/ai_n9377557/print
1794 - 1840
“Sometimes, that mountain you've been climbing, is just a grain of sand.”
From her hit single, So Small from the album, Carnival Ride (2007).
Source: The Apophenion (2008), p. 11; this makes reference to William Blake's Auguries of Innocence: "To see the world in a grain of sand…"
“it wasn't the mountain ahead that wears you out, but the grain of sand in your shoe”
Source: The Beach Trees
“Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth.”
54 min 55 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Journeys in Space and Time [Episode 8]
Context: Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours and every one of them is a succession of incidents, events, occurrences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time. And our small planet at this moment, here we face a critical branch point in history, what we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants, it is well within our power to destroy our civilization and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition or greed or stupidity we could plunge our world into a time of darkness deeper than the time between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissance. But we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet.
Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 131
“Jews are likened to sand: tiny grains, dry and scattered, each separate from the other.”
Reb Nohemkes Myses, 1904, p. 200.
“When the beginnings of self-destruction enter the heart it seems no bigger than a grain of sand.”
The Late Forties and the Fifties, 1952 entry.
The Journals of John Cheever (1991)
