Books
May Sarton

Halfway to Silence

  • horizonsofabysshas quotedlast year
    Today, I have learned

    That to become

    A great, cracked,

    Wide-open door

    Into nowhere

    Is wisdom.
  • horizonsofabysshas quotedlast year
    I sit at my desk under attack,

    Trying to survive

    Panic and guilt, the flu…

    Outside

    Even sunlight looks cold

    Glancing off glare ice.

    Inside,

    Narcissus in bloom,

    And a patch of sun on the pile

    Of unanswered letters.

    I lift my eyes

    To the blue

    Open-ended ocean.

    Why worry?

    Some things are always there.
  • horizonsofabysshas quotedlast year
    I am not available

    At the moment

    Except to myself.
  • horizonsofabysshas quotedlast year
    Here on this island I feel myself at home.

    And because I am here, happy among the bees,

    A donkey in the field, the crooked paths

    That lead me always to some precipitous fall

    And the sudden opening out of blue below,

    Hope flows back into my crannies now.

    I am ready to begin the long journey

    Toward love, the mainland, perhaps not alone.
  • horizonsofabysshas quotedlast year
    For it is just this being enclosed

    In a small space within a huge space

    That makes them feel both safe and free,

    Tilling small fields under a huge sky.
  • horizonsofabysshas quotedlast year
    I watch them, full of wonder and dismay,

    Feeling the need to shape my life, be calm,

    Like the untroubled pruners who, all day,

    Cut back, are ruthless, and without a qualm.

    While I, beleaguered, always conscience-torn,

    Have let the thickets stifle peaceful growth
  • horizonsofabysshas quotedlast year
    My gentle earth is barren now, or nearly.

    Harden it well against the loss and change;

    Prepare to hold the fastness, since I know

    This open self must grow more harsh and strange

    Before it meets the softness of the snow.

    Withstand, endure, the worst is still to come.
  • horizonsofabysshas quotedlast year
    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.
  • horizonsofabysshas quotedlast year
    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.
  • horizonsofabysshas quotedlast year
    No, only the rising tide and its slow progress

    Opens the shell.
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