The world alive with love, where leaves tremble,
systole and diastole marking miraculous hours,
is burning round the children where they lie
deep in caressing gra**es all the day,
and feverish words of once upon a time
a**ail their hearts with languor and with swans.
The pebble's shadow quivers in the sun;
the light grows low, and they become
tuned to the love and d**h of day, the instruments
of life and dream, as Syrinx flying
in fear from unimaginable sound, became
music's green channel; then they rise and go
up the inevitable stony slope
to search untraveled valleys for the land
of wonder and of loss; but on that hill
they find it, wound about them like a cloud.
Some are too much at home in the role of wanderer,
watcher, listener; who by lamplit doors
that open only to another's knock,
commune with shadows and are happier
with ghosts than living guests in a warm house.
They drift about the darkening city squares,
coats blown in evening winds and fingers feeling
familiar holes in pockets, thinking: Life
has always been a counterfeit, a dream
where dreaming figures danced behind the gla**.
Yet as they work, or absently stand at a window
letting a tap run and the plates lie wet,
while the bright rain softly shines upon slates,
they feel the whole of life is theirs, the music,
“colour, and warmth, and light”; hands held
safe in the hands of love; and trees beside them
dark and gentle, growing as they grow
a part of the world with fire and house and child.
The undertone of all their solitude
Is the unceasing question, “Who am I?
A shadow's image on the rainy pavement,
walking in wonder past the vivid windows,
a half-contented guest among my ghosts?
Or one who, imagining light, air, sun,
can now take root in life, inherit love?”