Escaping Backward to Perceive

Escaping Backward to Perceive - meaning Summary

Perception Through Paradoxical Motion

The poem explores paradoxical motion as a route to perception and spiritual insight. The speaker describes escaping both backward and forward, and retreating up and down, as ways of encountering the sea and a 'glittering Embrace.' These conflicting movements compress outward and inward experience, suggesting that withdrawal and advance alike undermine ordinary footing and ultimately instruct or reveal the Divine. Action and disorientation become means of revelation rather than mere flight.