A Contemplative Moment: Now I Become Myself

 

 

Now I Become Myself

May Sarton, Collected Poems 1930-1993

 

Now I become myself. It's taken

Time, many years and places;

I have been dissolved and shaken,

Worn other people's faces,

Run madly, as if Time were there,

Terribly old, crying a warning,

'Hurry, you will be dead before --'

(What? Before you reach the morning?

Or the end of the poem is clear?

Or love safe in the walled city?)

Now to stand still, to be here,

Feel my own weight and density!

The black shadow on the paper

Is my hand; the shadow of a word

As thought shapes the shaper

Falls heavy on the page, is heard.

 

All fuses now, falls into place

From wish to action, word to silence,

Mark my word, my love, my time, my face

Gathered into one intense

Gesture of growing like a plant.

As slowly as a ripening fruit

Fertile, detached, and always spent,

Falls but does not exhaust the root,

Grows in me and becomes the song,

Made so and rooted by love.

Now there is time and Time is young.

O, in this single hour I live

All of myself and do not move.

I, the pursued, who madly ran,

Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!