After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white.
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead
Then I was sealed, and like the wintering tree
I stood me locked upon a summer core;
Living, had died a death, and asked no more.
And I lived then, but as enduringly,
And my heart beat, but only as to be.
Ill weathers well, hail, gust and cold I bore,
I held my life as hid, at root, in store:
Thus I lived then, till this air breathed on me.
Till this kind air breathed kindness everywhere,
A fall over rock,
Metal answering to water,
Is the seal of this spot;
A land trodden by music
And the tune forgot.
Of a region savage,
The territory that was broken,
Silver gushed free;
And earth holy, earth meek shall receive it
In humility.
Light at each point was beating then to flight,
The sapling bark flushed upward, and the welling
Tips of the wood touched, touched at the bound,
And boughs were slight and burdened beyond telling
Toward that caress of the boughs a summer’ s night,
Illimitable in fragrance and in sound.
Send forth the high falcon flying after the mind
Till it come toppling down from its cold cloud:
The beak of the falcon to pierce it till it fall
Where the simple heart is bowed.
O in wild innocence it rides
The rare ungovernable element,
But once it sways to terror and descent,
The marches of the wind are its abyss,
No wind staying it upward of the breast —
Let mind be proud for this,
And ignorant from what fabulous cause it dropt,
This that is washed with weed and pebblestone
Curved once a dolphin’ s length before the prow,
And I who read the land to which we bore
In its grave eyes, question my idol now,
What cold and marvelous fancy it may keep,
Since the salt terror swept us from our course,
Or if a wisdom later than the storm,
For old green ocean’ s tinctured it so deep;
Ash and strewments, the first moth-wings, pale
Ardour of brief evenings, on the fecund wind;
Or all a wing, less than wind,
Breath of low herbs upfloats, petal or wing,
Haunting the musk precincts of burial.
For the season of newer riches moves triumphing,
Of the evanescence of deaths. These potpourris
Earth-tinctured, jet insect-bead, cinder of bloom —
I close my eyes like a good little boy at night in bed,
as I was told to do by my mother when she lived,
and before bed I brush my teeth and slip on my pajamas,
as I was told, and look forward to tomorrow.
I do all things required of me to make me a citizen of sterling worth.
I keep a job and come home each evening for dinner. I arrive at the
same time on the same train to give my family a sense of order.
I killed a fly
and laid my weapon next to it
as one lays the weapon of a dead hero
beside his body — the fly
that tried to mount the window
to its top; that was born out of a swamp
to die in a bold effort beyond itself,
and I am the one who brought it to an end.
Tired of the day and with night coming on
I lay my body down beside the fly.
I stand and listen, head bowed,
to my inner complaint.
Persons passing by think
I am searching for a lost coin.
You’ re fired, I yell inside
after an especially bad episode.
I’ m letting you go without notice
or terminal pay. You just lost
another chance to make good.
But then I watch myself standing at the exit,
