Halfway to Silence Read online

  How can we name it “fall,” this slow ascent

  From dawn to dawn, each purer than the last,

  As structure comes back through the golden tent

  And shimmering color floats down to be lost?

  How can we name it “fall,” this elevation

  As all our earthly shelter drops away

  And we stand poised as if for revelation

  On the brink of another startling day,

  And still must live with ever greater height,

  And skies more huge and luminous at dusk,

  Till we are strained by light and still more light

  As if this progress were an imposed task

  Demanding of love supreme clarity,

  Impersonal, stark as the winter sky.

  Everywhere, in my garden, in my thought

  I batten down, shore up, and prune severely.

  All tender plants are cut down to the root.

  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.

  Wild animals seek shelter from the cold,

  But I am as exposed here safe at home

  As the wild fox running outside the fold:

  He burns his brightness for mere food or bed.

  I contain love as if it were a warhead.

  Pruning the Orchard

  Out there in the orchard they have come

  To prune the overgrowth, cut back and free

  The crisscrossed branches of apple and plum,

  Shaping the formless back to symmetry.

  They do not work for beauty’s sake

  But to improve the harvest come next year.

  Each tough lopsided branch they choose to break

  Is broken toward fruit more crisp and rare.

  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,

  Spontaneous flow stopped, poems stillborn,

  Imagined duties, pebbles in my mouth.

  Muse, pour strength into my pruning wrist

  That I may cut the way toward open space,

  A timeless orchard, poetry-possessed,

  There without guilt to contemplate your face.

  Old Lovers at the Ballet

  In the dark theatre lovers sit

  Watching the supple dancers weave

  A fugue, motion and music melded.

  There on the stage below, brilliantly lit

  No dancer stumbles or may grieve;

  Their very smiles are disciplined and moulded.

  And in the dark old lovers feel dismay

  Watching the ardent bodies leap and freeze,

  Thinking how age has changed them and has mocked.

  Once they were light and bold in lissome play,

  Limber as willows that could bend with ease—

  But as they watch a vision is unlocked.

  Imagination springs the trap of youth.

  And in the dark motionless, as they stare,

  Old lovers reach new wonders and new answers

  As in the mind they leap to catch the truth,

  For young the soul was awkward, unaware,

  That claps its hands now with the supple dancers.

  And in the flesh those dancers cannot spare

  What the old lovers have had time to learn,

  That the soul is a lithe and serene athlete

  That deepens touch upon the darkening air.

  It is not energy but light they burn,

  The radiant powers of the Paraclete.

  IV

  Sark

  The isle is for islanders, some born—

  They like being surrounded by

  And anchored in the ever-changing sea,

  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.

  The isle is for islanders, some made—

  They are drawn here, the two-in-one,

  To be alone together, hand in hand,

  Walking the silence of the high plateau

  Where bees and heather marry well,

  Or down long flights of stairs to caves.

  Love is the summer island, safe and wild.

  Islands are for people who are islands,

  Who have always been detached from the main

  For a purpose, or because they crave

  The free within the framed as poets do,

  The solitary for whom being alone

  Is not a loneliness but fertile good.

  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.

  In Suffolk

  Mourning my old ways, guilt fills the mind,

  As memories well up from ripening gold

  And I look far away over tilted land

  Watching splashed light and shadow on the fold

  Where restless clouds flock over and disband.

  To what have I been faithful in the end?

  What lover loved forever well or ill?

  As clouds come over to darken a line of trees

  And then far off shadow a wooded hill,

  I have to answer, “faithful only to these,

  To earth itself turning toward the fall,

  To earth’s relentless changing mysteries.”

  All lovers sow and reap their harvests from

  This flesh ever to be renewed and reconceived

  As the bright ploughs break open the dark loam.

  Whatever the cost and whatever I believed,

  Only the earth itself, great honeycomb,

  Gives comfort to the many times bereaved.

  Whatever cloud comes over with black rain

  To make my life seem of so little worth,

  To cover the bright gold with guilt and pain,

  The poem, life itself, labor of birth

  Has been forced back again and again

  To find renewal in the fertile earth.

  Fidelity to what? To a gnarled tree, a root,

  To the necessity for growth and discipline.

  Now I am old why mourn what had to go?

  Despite the loss and so much fallen fruit,

  The harvest is so rich it fills my bin.

  What had to grow has been allowed to grow.

  A Winter Notebook

  1

  Low tide—

  The sea’s slow motion,

  The surge and slur

  Over rocky shingle.

  A few gulls ride

  Rocking-horse waves.

  Under blurred gray sky

  The field shines white.

  2

  I am not available

  At the moment

  Except to myself.

  Downstairs the plumber

  Is emptying the big tank,

  Water-logged.

  The pump pumped on and on

  And might have worn out.

  So many lives pour into this house,

  Sometimes I get too full;

  The pump wears out.

  So now I am emptying the tank.

  It is not an illness
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  That keeps me from writing.

  I am simply staying alive

  As one does

  At times by taking in,

  At times by shutting out.

  3

  I wake in a wide room

  Before dawn,

  Just a little light framed by three windows.

  I wake in a large space

  Listening to the gentle hush of waves.

  I watch the sea open like a flower

  A huge blue flower

  As the sun rises

  Out of the dark.

  4

  It is dark when I go downstairs

  And always the same shiver

  As I turn on the light—

  There they are, alive in the cold,

  Hyacinths, begonias,

  Cyclamen, a cloud of bloom

  As though they were birds

  Settled for a moment in the big window.

  I wake my hand, still half asleep,

  With a sweet geranium leaf.

  After breakfast

  I tend to all their needs,

  These extravagant joys,

  Become a little drunk on green

  And the smell of earth.

  We have lived through another

  Bitter cold night.

  5

  On this dark cold morning

  After the ice storm

  A male pheasant

  Steps precisely across the snow.

  His red and gold,

  The warmth and shine of him

  In the white freeze,

  Explosive!

  A firecracker pheasant

  Opens the new year.

  6

  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.

  7

  The ornamental cherry

  Is alive

  With cedar waxwings,

  Their dandy crests silhouetted

  Against gray sky.

  They are after cherries,

  Dark-red jewels

  In frozen clusters

  On the asymmetrical twigs.

  In the waste of dirty snow

  The scene is as brilliant

  As a Rajput painting.

  I note the yellow-banded tail feathers,

  A vermilion accent on the wing—

  What elegance!

  8

  The dark islands

  Float on a silvery sea.

  I see them like a mirage

  Through the branches of the great oak.

  After the leaves come out

  They will be gone—

  These winter joys

  And snow coming tonight.

  Of the Muse

  There is no poetry in lies,

  But in crude honesty

  There is hope for poetry.

  For a long time now

  I have been deprived of it

  Because of pride,

  Would not allow myself

  The impossible.

  Today, I have learned

  That to become

  A great, cracked,

  Wide-open door

  Into nowhere

  Is wisdom.

  When I was young,

  I misunderstood

  The Muse.

  Now I am older and wiser,

  I can be glad of her

  As one is glad of the light.

  We do not thank the light,

  But rejoice in what we see

  Because of it.

  What I see today

  Is the snow falling:

  All things are made new.

  Index

  After All These Years, 17

  After all these years 17

  After the Storm, 42

  After you have gone 28

  Airs Above the Ground, 13

  Along a Brook,, 33

  Anger’s the beast in me 37

  As the tide rises, the closed mollusk 44

  At the Black Rock, 37

  Autumn Sonnets, 39

  Balcony, The, 22

  Beggar, Queen, and Ghost, 34

  Blurred as though it has been woken 21

  Control, 32

  Country of Pain, The, 35

  First Autumn, 27

  Fragile as a spider’s web 43

  Geese, The, 48

  Give me a love 18

  Halfway to Silence, 5

  Hold the tiger fast in check 32

  How can we name it “fall,” this slow ascent 49

  I carried two things around in my mind 25

  I have been a beggar with a begging bowl 34

  In all the summer glut of green 46

  In Suffolk, 46

  In the country of pain we are each alone 35

  In the dark theatre lovers sit 51

  I was halfway to silence 5

  I watched wind ripple the field’s supple grasses 45

  Jealousy, 31

  June Wind, 45

  Lady of the Lake, The, 26

  Late Autumn, 47

  Love, 43

  Lover of silence, muse of the mysteries 22

  Love waits for a turning of the wind 41

  Low tide 57

  Mal du Départ, 28

  Mourning my old ways, guilt fills the mind 56

  Myths Return, The, 23

  Now in this armature 23

  Of Molluscs, 44

  Of the Muse, 61

  Old Lovers at the Ballet, 51

  Old Trees, 20

  Old trees 20

  On random wires the rows of summer swallows 47

  On Sark, 55

  Oriole, The, 19

  Out of Touch, 36

  Out there in the orchard they have come 50

  Pruning the Orchard, 50

  Somewhere at the bottom of the lake she is 26

  Summer Tree, The, 46

  The geese honked overhead 48

  The isle is for islanders, some born 55

  There is no poetry in lies 61

  The roar of big surf and above it all night 42

  The source is silted 36

  The white horse floats above the field 13

  Three Things, 25

  Time for Rich Silence, 24

  Time for rich silence 24

  Turning of the Wind, The, 41

  Two Songs, 18

  Voice, A, 21

  Water over sand 33

  What do the trees in the window have to tell 27

  What other lover 18

  When I was a child 31

  When maples wear their aureole 19

  Winter Notebook, A, 57

  A Biography of May Sarton

  May Sarton (1912–1995) was born Eleanore Marie Sarton on May 3 in Wondelgem, Belgium, the only child of the science historian George Sarton and the English artist Mabel Eleanor Elwes. Barely two years later, Sarton’s European childhood was interrupted by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the onset of the First World War.