Too tenuous

Thirty yards apart, they face not each other but both in the same direction, and yet could not be more together, these sandhill cranes near Ruby Lake, Nevada, two russet paleographic curves, slender Chinese brushstokes among tn reeds -- the composed and oriental splendor of this world. Bo, my son, you grow as this grows rarer. We know what the cranes are facing. Already I am a collector of such precious fragments and you will become perhaps a connoisseur, driven in love and wonder to pedantry. Turn away, dear Bo. Love will not keep in such a dwindled order too tenuous to know. From "From Snow and Rock, from Chaos" (New Directions, 1973)