Halfway to Silence

by May Sarton

  What do they see in the turning of a leaf?

  What more to be told before the coming of night?

  These two who are far apart and yet so near,

  These two together and so much alone

  Like stars set somewhere out in darkest space—

  The trees may say they have nothing to fear.

  The rain may tell of wearing down a stone,

  But the moody lovers tremble before a face.

  The trees in the window are turning toward sleep,

  Their light a changing light at the year’s turning,

  And the rain repeats its lonely plaintive phrase.

  How can these fragile lovers hope to keep

  A crimson leaf from falling, or this burning

  Maintain forever some hint of their great days?

  Mal du Départ

  After you have gone

  I walk up and down

  The strange chilling tomb

  This lively house has suddenly become.

  Even your white tulips

  Turn brown at the lips,

  Their freshness gone,

  And ashes on the hearth. I am alone.

  Absence infects the air

  And it is everywhere.

  How can I shake off woe,

  On what bed lay me down without you?

  What healing sacrament

  What ritual invent

  And quietly perform

  To bring life back and make it warm?

  Another day a letter

  Might tell you I am better,

  The invalid has taken

  Some food, is less forlorn and shaken.

  But for today it’s true

  That I can hardly draw

  A solitary breath

  That does not hurt me like a little death.

  II

  Jealousy

  When I was a child

  I walked a forest floor

  Charred black after the great trees burned.

  The air was acrid.

  Among old roots the fire still crept.

  Sometimes a small blue flame

  Licked at the soles of my feet,

  While overhead

  Birds hunted their nests.

  Fifty years ago

  I saw what it means to burn.

  I met the destructive flame,

  But only now I am old

  Have I come to know

  Its name.

  Control

  Hold the tiger fast in check

  Put the leash around his neck.

  Make it known a growl will tighten

  The collar. Browbeat. Frighten.

  Set the tiger on a tightrope.

  Make him walk it, make him cope.

  Punish any slightest fumble.

  Make him walk it. Watch him tremble.

  Yours the power to use or not

  Once the fierce soul has been caught.

  Yours to beat without forgiveness

  What is wild with fear and loss.

  You may have complete control

  There will be no roar or growl.

  But can you look into those eyes

  Where the smothered fire lies?

  Tame the tiger. Break his pride.

  You will find yourself outside

  With all those who can destroy

  Tiger love and tiger joy.

  Outside in the awful dark,

  Smothered every smallest spark

  Where nothing blesses or can bless,

  How will you bear the loneliness?

  Along a Brook

  Water over sand,

  I did not take your hand.

  Water over stone,

  We were each alone,

  In the green keep

  Of the wood we walked

  As though half asleep.

  Only birds talked.

  Only dogs played

  Among rock and root

  In the dappled shade

  And moss underfoot.

  In the grave place

  Could not take your hand.

  I had lost my face.

  Water over sand.

  Water over stone.

  How far did I go

  Through the thick pain

  Into darker shadow?

  But I found my face

  When I looked at you

  In the grave place—

  When I could look through

  To the stubborn child

  Who cannot be wrong,

  And forgave the child,

  And could sing my song.

  Beggar, Queen, and Ghost

  I have been a beggar with a begging bowl.

  I have been a queen with a golden crown.

  I have been so hungry I ate my soul,

  But never outcast and never thrown down

  Since I was alive

  And able to give.

  But never the beggar and never the queen

  Could live without hope behind a closed door,

  And the hungry poor never felt this pain,

  In the place where I could not give of my store,

  Not a crown of glory

  Nor a beggar’s story.

  There the beggar laid down his bowl and cried.

  There the queen took off her golden crown.

  There the woman who ate her soul nearly died.

  There buried so deep all praise and renown

  That the lonely guest

  Had become a ghost.

  And there I learned that hell is the place

  Where I cannot give (like a barren wife?)

  Where the soul is locked in behind a face,

  Where none of my riches can flow into life,

  Devalued, outcast,

  Queen, beggar, and ghost.

  The Country of Pain

  In the country of pain we are each alone.

  Only joy brings communion, the light game

  When passion tosses the ball high in air

  And we forget Medusa who turns love to stone,

  And Circe who knows every pig by name,

  And manic-depressive Eros in despair.

  In the country of pain there is no defence.

  Tears scandalize. If we try to get through

  To some rock of truth we are chastised

  Like children whose anguish may be immense,

  And told not to make scenes when all we know

  Is terrible loss and true love ill-used.

  In the country of pain we are animals

  Who cannot understand a sudden blow

  Or trust in a redeemer. There is none.

  For pain is the country of lost souls

  Which the gods flee because they know

  They cannot re-humanize the pig or stone.

  What redeemer now could return lost joys

  Imprisoned by an ethos, beaten down,

  The things made cheap within a damaged psyche,

  The mysterious, magical, fantastic toys

  Love showers on us with beautiful abandon

  When manic-depressive Eros has a high?

  For always what looked like an easy game

  Becomes too frightening for innocence to play.

  The country of Eros becomes the country of pain,

  And the beglamored pigs who gladly came

  To Circe’s call die in some horrible way

  As Medusa begins her cold cruel reign.

  Out of Touch

  The source is silted

  That flowed so fast and clear

  Packed down, polluted,

  The goddess in despair.

  The dry mouth burns

  In this infernal drought.

  The goddess flees and turns

  Not to be caught.

  Animal pride is broken.

  Children are murderers,

  The deprived overtaken

  By strange disorders.

  The goddess turns away

  From cages like these.

  Hers love
’s fierce joy and play

  Not its bleak miseries.

  At the Black Rock

  Anger’s the beast in me.

  In you it is pride.

  When they meet they lock.

  There is no pity.

  At the black rock

  Where the beasts hide

  Love turns to hate

  In a cruel war,

  And once it’s begun

  It is always too late

  To be patient or fair.

  And no one can win.

  Let us go to the rock

  Where the beasts hide

  And kneeling there, pray

  For some heart-cracking shock

  To set us both free

  From anger and pride.

  At the cold impasse

  Tame the anguished cries,

  Mend what has been torn,

  Bring the animals peace

  Where they stand forlorn

  With love in their eyes.

  Can I do it? Can you?

  It means yielding all.

  It means going naked

  No refuge but rue,

  Admitting stark need—

  Eden after the fall.

  III

  The Turning of the Wind

  Love waits for a turning of the wind.

  Elusive, patient, every early morning,

  Although the humid heat has not been kind,

  Love waits for clear air, an end to mourning.

  There is a wall. What wind to blow it down?

  What power cleanse the awful fetid air

  And burn the haze away, what brilliant sun

  To show us the rich landscape is still there?

  We cannot hear each other. Truth gets lost.

  Lack of rapport has damaged the whole range

  Of what we might redeem that pain has cost.

  So love waits for the wind to change.

  After the Storm

  The roar of big surf and above it all night

  The peepers singing out so sweet and frail!

  Above the pounding roar that wears down rock

  They dare, they try to connect through the gale.

  And if that relentless boom might seem to mock

  Those who still risk their hope before daylight,

  That song suggests something is going right.

  Whatever locked love cannot bear to do,

  The tree frogs can, and spring is breaking through.

  Love

  Fragile as a spider’s web

  Hanging in space

  Between tall grasses,

  It is torn again and again.

  A passing dog

  Or simply the wind can do it.

  Several times a day

  I gather myself together

  And spin it again.

  Spiders are patient weavers.

  They never give up.

  And who knows

  What keeps them at it?

  Hunger, no doubt,

  And hope.

  Of Molluscs

  As the tide rises, the closed mollusc

  Opens a fraction to the ocean’s food,

  Bathed in its riches. Do not ask

  What force would do, or if force could.

  A knife is of no use against a fortress.

  You might break it to pieces as gulls do.

  No, only the rising tide and its slow progress

  Opens the shell. Lovers, I tell you true.

  You who have held yourselves closed hard

  Against warm sun and wind, shelled up in fears

  And hostile to a touch or tender word—

  The ocean rises, salt as unshed tears.

  Now you are floated on this gentle flood

  That cannot force or be forced, welcome food

  Salt as your tears, the rich ocean’s blood,

  Eat, rest, be nourished on the tide of love.

  June Wind

  I watched wind ripple the field’s supple grasses.

  For once earth is alive while restless ocean

  Lies still beyond it like a flat blue screen.

  I watch the wind burnishing as it passes,

  Lifting soft waves, an ecstasy of motion,

  A long glissando through the static green.

  These waves crash on no rock; rooted, they stay,

  As restless love, that ocean, changes over

  And comes to land, alive, a shining field

  Caught in wind’s captivating gentle play

  As though a harp played by a subtle lover—

  And the tormented ocean has been stilled.

  The Summer Tree

  In all the summer glut of green,

  Serrated leaves, a dark and shifty screen,

  Catalpa flowers, unseasonal surprise,

  To tense the landscape up for drowsy eyes.

  We come alive beholding points of white,

  Among the leaves, immense rosettes alight.

  The blessing of pure form that opens space

  And makes us stop and look in sudden peace.

  Late Autumn

  On random wires the rows of summer swallows

  Wait for their lift-off. They will soon be gone

  Before All Saints and before All Hallows,

  The changing time when we are most alone.

  Disarmed, too vulnerable, full of dread,

  And once again as naked as the trees

  Before the dark, precarious days ahead,

  And troubled skies over tumultuous seas.

  When we are so transparent to the dead

  There is no wall. We hear their voices speak,

  And as the small birds wheel off overhead

  We bend toward the earth suddenly weak.

  How to believe that all will not be lost?

  Our flowers, too, not perish in the blight?

  Love, leave me your South against the frost.

  Say “hush” to my fears, and warm the night.

  The Geese

  The geese honked overhead.

  I ran to catch the skein

  To watch them as they fled

  In a long wavering line.

  I caught my breath, alone,

  Abandoned like a lover

  With winter at the bone

  To see the geese go over.

  It happens every year

  And every year some woman

  Haunted by loss and fear

  Must take it as an omen,

  Must shiver as she stands

  Watching the wild geese go,

  With sudden empty hands

  Before the cruel snow.

  Some woman every year

  Must catch her breath and weep

  With so much wildness near

  At all she cannot keep.

  Autumn Sonnets