In
a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I
meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I
hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A
lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I
live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts
of the hill and serpents of the den.
What’s
madness but nobility of soul
At
odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I
know the purity of pure despair,
My
shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That
place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or
winding path? The edge is what I have.
A
steady storm of correspondences!
A
night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And
in broad day the midnight come again!
A
man goes far to find out what he is—
Death
of the self in a long, tearless night,
All
natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark,
dark my light, and darker my desire.
My
soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps
buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A
fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The
mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And
one is One, free in the tearing wind.
-Theodore Roethke
