9 quotes
I lived with deep roots once:
Have I forgotten their ways —
The gradual embrace
Of lichen around stones?
Words for the Wind (1958)
I have gone into the waste lonely places
Behind the eye.
Words for the Wind (1958)
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)
Words for the Wind (1958)
Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
Words for the Wind (1958)
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Words for the Wind (1958)
The moon draws back its waters from the shore.
By the lake's edge, I see a silver swan,
And she is what I would. In this light air,
Lost opposites bend down —
Sing of that nothing of which all is made,
Or listen into silence, like a god.
Words for the Wind (1958)
How can I rest in the days of my slowness?
I've become a strange piece of flesh,
Nervous and cold, bird-furtive, whiskery,
With a cheek soft as a hound's ear.
What's left is light as a seed;
I need an old crone's knowing.
Words for the Wind (1958)
Is pain a promise? I was schooled in pain,
And found out what I could of all desire;
I weep for what I'm like when I'm alone
In the deep center of the voice and fire. I know the motion of the deepest stone.
Each one's himself, yet each one's everyone.
Words for the Wind (1958)
The night wind rises. Does my father live?
Dark hangs upon the waters of the soul.
My flesh is breathing slower than a wall.
Love alters all. Unblood my instinct, love.
Words for the Wind (1958)