Showing posts with label May Sarton Now I Become Myself. Show all posts
Showing posts with label May Sarton Now I Become Myself. Show all posts

03 July 2018

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!