Halfway to Silence by May Sarton Read Free Book Online Page B

great oak
As I said your name,
We saw him. He was there. He spoke.
The bird of flame.

Old Trees
Old trees—
How exquisite the white blossom
On the gnarled branch!
Thickened trunk, erratic shape
Battered by winter winds,
Bent in the long cold.
Young ones may please
The aesthete,
But old trees—
The miracle of their flowering
Against such odds—
Bring healing.
Let us praise them,
And sing hosannahs
As the small buds grow red
Just before they open.

A Voice
    Blurred as though it has been woken
    From an underground and secret river,
    This voice itself and not the language spoken
    Has made the air around me shiver.
    Seductive sound, mysterious chord
    That speaks its message in the very timbre
    And not in a to be deciphered word
    That I might hunt down or remember.
    It wanders through my dreams and there I learn
    I have to make the journey, have to go,
    Whatever I must change or overturn
    To reach the source, so strong this undertow.
    Like a tapped glass the shivered air
    Echoes and echoes a single poignant note.
    That voice, where does it live? I must go there,
    Comfort, entreat, and bless the magic throat.

The Balcony
    after Baudelaire
    Lover of silence, muse of the mysteries,
    You will remember how we supped each night
    There on your balcony high in the trees
    Where a heraldic lion took late light,
    Lover of silence, muse of the mysteries.
    The big dogs slumbered near us like good bears;
    The old cat begged a morsel from my plate,
    And all around leaves stirred in the warm airs
    Breathed from the valley as the red sun set.
    The big dogs slumbered near us like good bears.
    I thought of all the pain and how we met
    Late in our lives yet lavishly at ease,
    Having assumed an end to old regret
    In the eternal present of the trees—
    I thought of all the pain and how we met.
    There every night we drank deep of the wine
    And of our love, still without history,
    Yet the completion of some real design
    Earned with much thought, muse of the mystery.
    There every night we drank deep of the wine.
    While out of deprivation a huge flower,
    The evening’s passion, was about to bloom.
    Such intimacy held us in its power
    The long years vanished in a little room,
    And out of deprivation, a huge flower.

The Myths Return
    Now in this armature
    Where the tide rose and rose
    Till every crack was filled,
    Long echoes still
    Reverberate in the hollow cave,
    And the walls tremble.
    Poseidon
    Catching a dolphin
    Must have laughed in his fierce joy.
    Eons ago
    Sacred and creaturely married,
    And still those great tides ebb and flow—
    As we now know.

Time for Rich Silence
Time for rich silence,
The passionate season,
For the present tense
Beyond speech, outside reason.
Time now to explore
These intricate cages,
Two bodies aware,
Two equipages.
Find the way to unlock
A mysterious door
At the threshold of shock
With the impact of war.
Then gentle fierce joys
On the wave’s rising curve
Till it reaches it poise,
Tumbles, touches the nerve.
And all tumult is done—
Two equipages
In silent communion
Released from their cages.

Three Things
    I carried two things around in my mind
    Walking the woods and thinking how to say
    Shiver of poplar leaves in a light wind,
    Threshing of water over tumbled stones,
    A brook rippling its interrupted way—
    Two things that bring a tremor to the bones.
    And now I carry around in my head a third.
    The force of it stops me as I walk the wood,
    Three things for which no one has found a word—
    Wind in the poplar, tremor under the skin
    Deep in the flesh, a shiver of more than blood
    When lovers, water, and leaves are wholly one.

The Lady of the Lake
    Somewhere at the bottom of the lake she is
    Entangled among weeds, her deep self drowned.
    I cannot be with her there. I know she is bound
    To a dead man. Her wide open eyes are his.
    Only a part of her surfaces in my arms
    When I can lift her up and float her there
    Gently to breathe life-giving natural air,
    Wind in the leaves, the bright summer’s charms.
    For I