Lines 1–8

“One of the Smallest” is a long poem without stanzas. Rather than simply say that there is one long thread that runs through the whole poem tying it together, it would be more accurate to say that there is one long thread running through the poem as if placed there by a sewing machine gone berserk, zigzagging unevenly as Stern’s thoughts ricochet down the poem. However, there are divisions that can be made according to subject and punctuation.

The poem starts with “one of the smallest” things in existence, a ray of light. The “first gray light” of morning finds its way through a tiny hole “in the cracked window blind” in the narrator’s room. Sunshine, “made of gas and water”—a reference to the gaseous composition of the sun and...