Read an Excerpt
Collected Poems
(1930â?"1993)
By May Sarton OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1993 May Sarton
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4804-7436-9
CHAPTER 1
First Snow
This is the first soft snow
That tiptoes up to your door
As you sit by the fire and sew,
That sifts through a crack in the floor
And covers your hair with hoar.
This is the stiffening wound
Burning the heart of a deer
Chased by a moon-white hound,
This is the hunt and the queer
Sick beating of feet that fear.
This is the crisp despair
Lying close to the marrow,
Fallen out of the air
Like frost on the narrow
Bone of a shot sparrow.
This is the love that will seize
Savagely onto your mind
And do whatever he please,
This the despair, and a moon-blind
Hound you will never bind.
"She Shall Be Called Woman"
Genesis II, 23
1
She did not cry out
nor move.
She lay quite still
and leaned
against the great curve
of the earth,
and her breast
was like a fruit
bursten of its own sweetness.
She did not move
nor cry out—
she only looked down
at the hand
against her breast.
She looked down
at the naked hand
and wept.
She could not yet endure
this delicate savage
to lie upon her.
She could not yet endure
the blood to beat so there.
She could not cope
with the first ache
of fullness.
She lay quite still
and looked down
at the hand
where blood was locked
and longed to loose the blood
and let it flow
over her breast
like rain.
2
Not on the earth
but surely somewhere
between the elements
of air and sea
she lay that night,
no rim of bone to mark
where body clove to body
and no separate flesh,
strangely impenetrable—
O somewhere surely
did she come
to that clear place
where sky and water meet
and lay transparent there,
knowing the wave.
3
She bore the wound of desire
and it did not close,
though she had tried
to burn her hand
and turn one pain
into a simpler pain—
yet it did not close.
She had not known
how strong
the body's will,
how intricate
the stirring of its litheness
that lay now
unstrung,
like a bow—
she saw herself
disrupted at the center
and torn.
And she went into the sea
because her core ached
and there was no healing.
4
Not in denial, her peace.
For there in the sea
where she had wished
to leave her body
like a little garment,
she saw now
that not by severing this
would finity be ended
and the atom die,
not so the pure abstract
exist alone.
From those vast places
she must come back
into her particle.
She must put on again
the little garment
of hunger.
Not in denial
her appeasement,
not yet.
5
For a long time
it would be pain
and weakness,
and she who worshiped
all straight things
and the narrow breast
would lie relaxed
like an animal asleep,
without strength.
For a long time
a consciousness possessed her
that felt into all grief
as if it were a wound
within herself—
a mouse with its tiny shriek
would leave her
drained and spent.
The unanswerable body
seemed
held in an icy pity
for all livingness—
that was itself
initiate.
6
And then one day
all feeling
slipped out from her skin
until no finger's consciousness remained,
no pain—
and she all turned
to earth
like abstract gravity.
She did not know
how she had come
to close her separate lids
nor where she learned
the gesture of her sleeping,
yet something in her slept
most deeply
and something in her
lay like stone
under a folded dress—
she could not tell how long.
7
Her body was a city
where the soul
had lain asleep,
and now she woke.
She was aware
down to extremity
of how herself was charged,
fiber electric,
a hand under her breast
could hear the dynamo.
A hand upon her wrist
could feel the pulse beat.
She felt the atoms stir,
the myriad expand
and stir
She looked at her hand—
the mesh
with its multitude of lines,
the exquisite small hairs,
the veins
finding their way
down to the nails,
the nails themselves
set in so firmly
with half-moons
at their base,
the fine-set bone,
knuckle and sinew,
and she examined
the mysterious legend
upon the palm—
this was her hand,
a present someone had given her.
And she looked at her breasts
that were firm and full,
standing straightly
out from her chest,
and were each a city
mysteriously part
of other cities.
The earth itself
was not more intricate,
more lovely
than these two
cupped in her hands,
heavy in her hands.
Nothing ever was
as wonderful as this.
8
She let her hands
go softly down her skin,
the curving rib,
soft belly
and slim thigh.
She let her hands
slip down
as if they held a shift
and she were trying it
for the first time,
a shining supple garment
she would not want to lose:
So did she clothe herself.
9
She would not ever be naked
again—
she would not know
that nakedness
that stretches to the brim
and finds no shelter
from the pure terrific
light of space.
The finite self
had gathered
and was born
out of the infinite,
was hers
and whole.
For the first time
she knew what it meant
to be made so
and molded into this shape
of a pear,
this heaviness of curving fruit.
10
There were seeds
within her
that burst at intervals
and for a little while
she would come back
to heaviness,
and then before a surging miracle
of blood,
relax,
and reidentify herself,
each time more closely
with the heart of life.
"I am the beginning,
the never-ending,
the perfect tree."
And she would lean
again as once
on the great curve of the earth,
part of its turning,
as distinctly part
of the universe as a star—
as unresistant,
as completely rhythmical.
Strangers
There have been two strangers
Who met within a wood
And looked once at each other
Where they stood.
And there have been two strangers
Who met among the heather
And did not look at all
But lay down together.
And there have been two strangers
Who met one April day
And looked long at each other,
And went their way.
CHAPTER 2
Prayer before Work
Great one, austere,
By whose intent the distant star
Holds its course clear,
Now make this spirit soar—
Give it that ease.
Out of the absolute
Abstracted grief, comfortless, mute,
Sound the clear note,
Pure, piercing as the flute:
Give it precision.
Austere, great one,
By whose grace the inalterable song
May still be wrested from
The corrupt lung:
Give it strict form.
Architectural Image
Whatever finds its place now in this edifice
Must be a buttress to the spire's strict arrow,
No arbitrary grace, no facile artifice
Beyond its compass, absolute and narrow.
Structure imponderable in its ascension,
It is the central nerve, the living spine,
Within it there exists a soaring tension,—
Flight, but deriving from the sternest line.
Whatever arches mold to gentle curve,
Whatever flowers are curved into its face,
Are thrown, are carved to decorate and serve
That motion of a finger into space.
All that is builded here is built to bind
The gentle arch, the stone flower of desire
Into the sterner vision of the mind:
The structure of this passion is a spire.
Understatement
This wind, corruption in the city
(Spirit pent up in an enclosure),
That steals, seductive, without pity,
The heart's composure.
Think of it gusting over a field today,
Setting the cows to lowing with surprise,
Spreading the sweet smell of manure and hay,
Bringing tears to the eyes.
Oh, there are places where this evil wind
Would work a blessed charm,
Where a wild thing like this warm wind
Would do no harm.
Summary
In the end it is the dark for which all lovers pine.
They cannot bear the light on their transparent faces,
The light on nerves exposed like a design.
They have a great need of sleep in foreign places,
Of another country than the heart and another speech.
In the end it is escape of which all lovers dream
As men in prison dream of a stretch of beach.
When they toss wide-eyed in their beds they may seem
To think of the cruel mouth and the hard breast
But it is simply murder that their hearts conceive,
Grown savage with the need of dark and rest.
They are ever innocent. They are found to believe
That love endures and their pain is infinite
Who have not learned that each single touch they give,
Every kiss, every word they speak holds death in it:
They are committing murder who merely live.
Address to the Heart
You cannot go back now to that innocence—
the pure pain that enters like a sword
making the bright blood flow
and the slow perfect healing, leaving you whole.
This is a deeper illness,
a poison that has entered every tissue:
Cut off your hand, you will not find it there.
This must be met and conquered in each separate atom,
must be lived out like a slow fever.
No part is mortally afflicted.
Each part will have its convalescence surely,
and yet you will arise from this infection
changed,
as one returns from death.
Memory of Swans
The memory of swans comes back to you in sleep;
The landscape is a currentless still stream
Where reeds and rushes stand fast-rooted, deep.
And there the marvelous swan, more white than cream,
More warm than snow, moves as if silence loved him,
Where the dark supple waters ripple and enlace
The soft curve of the breast but have not moved him,
Where fluid passion yields to that cold grace.
So swans proceed, a miracle of pomp across your sleep,
The birds of silence, perfect form and balanced motion:
How will you fashion love, how will you wake and keep
The pride, the purity of a great image freed of its emotion?
After Silence
Permit the eye so long lost in the inward night
Now to rejoice upon the outward forms of light;
Permit the mind return from those dark secret mazes
To rest a moment in these simple praises;
Permit the spirit homecoming from civil war
To poise itself on silence like a quiet star
That for this moment there may be no other will
Than to be silent, than to be absolutely still—
And then permit this human love to bless
Your further journey into solitariness.
Canticle
We sat smoking at a table by the river
And then suddenly in the silence someone said,
"Look at the sunlight on the apple tree there shiver:
I shall remember that long after I am dead."
Together we all turned to see how the tree shook,
How it sparkled and seemed spun out of green and gold,
And we thought that hour, that light and our long mutual look
Might warm us each someday when we were cold.
And I thought of your face that sweeps over me like light,
Like the sun on the apple making a lovely show,
So one seeing it marveled the other night,
Turned to me saying, "What is it in your heart? You glow."—
Not guessing that on my face he saw the singular
Reflection of your grace like fire on snow—
And loved you there.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Collected Poems by May Sarton. Copyright © 1993 May Sarton. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
