LIFE

Life,
The unloosening of hands
—The unloosening of little hands—
About the heart.
The welling up of tears:
Old habits, old deaths, good-bye!
You are sacred ground under my on-faring,
I shall tread so lightly that you will not feel my leave-taking?
Yet the breath of a new world—the ever promised-land—exalts my nostrils.
I am on the war-path towards peace:
The peace of single choice.
Determination—onward,
Evolutions open your arcana,
Shower down your nearest spears of truth,
Great fear throbs in me, fear that leads me on,
I have shut my eyes long enough
—Shut eyes grow blind!—
Clinging to just one little human life!
Limiting, repressing all it would not share,
I who had an easy world to give
In the first heart-beats of my hope—
Yet now, with forty years, has come another youth
—A youth in which I recognize myself!
—Myself, how long you’ve lingered, waited, strayed—
Beauty seems an empty shell—out-worn.
Great longing of my sea, break forth, be uncontained!…
Count not your shipwrecks—every spar may save.
So I, not cruelly, not impetuously,
But with keen, shrewd resolve—rise up.
Why do I rise on timid stealthy feet?
In the dark to take leave of the dark,
To kiss the eyes of night farewell,
And turn love’s withered face full on the dawn.
May the dawn learn through me,
Not tint and play with empty shadows here,
But raise the arch of triumph of its day.
… I hear a sound as of a world on flame.
My past a burning city?
Shall I look round?
—Salt of my earth: all my tears crystalized!
You’d call me back into the phantom house?
—O, Psyche holding high your awkward lamp,
O, Psyche, loved in darkness, see the day!