May Sarton

By Moonlight
We are true lovers without hope

Whose hearts are locked to time,

So lie with me on the grassy sward

On the cool black-shadowed slope,

For we’ll not sleep in a close warm room:

Whatever we are moving toward

An ample bed’s not our reward

Who are mad with the moon.

Wherever passionate love is leading

We’ll be discovering alone,

So little hope it can endure,

So wild, so deep, so dark the needing

That even fastened bone to bone,

We’ll not have lasting peace, that’s sure,

Nor any haven from despair

Who love by light of moon.

So come, though we shall never rest

In any house to call our own,

By any hearth we light and tend,

Lie here upon the cold earth’s breast

And lean your length hard on the stone:

Hearts break and they may also mend

But here until the certain end,

Wed me by light of moon.

Now the great open sky is ours

And the long light across the loam,

And we, gigantic hearts of dust,

Lie open like night-blooming flowers.

The homeless moon is our bright home,

And we shine too because we must,

Oh magic that we cannot trust,

The lovely changing moon!

Moving In
I moved into my house one day

In a downpour of leaves and rain,

“I took possession,” as they say,

With solitude for my domain.

At first it was an empty place

Where every room I came to meet

Watched me in silence like a face:

I heard the whisper of my feet.

So huge the absence walking there

Beside me on the yellow floor,

That one fly buzzing on the air

But made the stillness more and more.

What I possessed was all my own,

Yet not to be possessed at all,

And not a house or even hearthstone,

And never any sheltering wall.

There solitude became my task,

No shelter but a grave demand,

And I must answer, never ask,

Taking this bridegroom by the hand.

I moved into my life one day

In a downpour of leaves in flood,

I took possession, as they say,

And knew I was alone for good.

Love

This cup holds grief and balm in equal measure,

The hearts of lovers as they walk, how pure;

How cool the wind upon the open palm

As they move on toward harvest, and so sure

Even this ripening has a marvelous calm

And a still center.

Death becomes real, and love is forced to grow.

These lovers do not turn away to weep,

But hold carefully all they have to keep,

And stare long at all they have to know.

When every gesture is made upon a quicksand,

Touch must be absolute and firm the hand.

Not by not seeing, but by seeing through

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.

We enter this evening as we enter a quartet

Listening again for its particular note

The interval where all seems possible,

Order within time when action is suspended

If I can let you go as trees let go

Their leaves, so casually, one by one

Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,

Moth in the Schoolroom

Over night it had emerged

From the contorted bisque shell

Of its cocoon

In a small cage

In the schoolroom.

We watched it,

Fragile furred antennae,

Wings still damp and wrinkled

Feeling their way

Toward this new incarnation,

And their slow, slow

Pulsation.

I stood there beside you

After another meeting,

Close to another parting,

And thought of our mothlike love—

The cocoons of separation,

The cramped hard times,

And wings pulsing slowly

After we come together.

How long has love to live

So close to hope,

So close to caged?

Now it is death again

In the cocoon

That limits and contorts.

The exquisite moth

Its velvet softness,

Is a slow worm

Waiting and suffering

Toward huge quiet wings.