The Creation

I

Space, vacant of wind and the sweep of
       silence,
The almost-heard voice and the listening
Until intent becomes the pain of
   consciousness,
Vacant of glooms in owlish nights
And moist resolving into dawn,
Empty, with no anticipation, no retrospect,
And void of desolation—the hermit crab
Broken on a curve of beach,
Curved waves and gray cliffs sloping away;
And void of consummation—
That peak of pleasure while it neither rises
Nor has yet begun to fall away;
Vacant of wind, no scramble of birds to take
   the air,
And silence void of expectation.

II

My hands, stretched at my side, without
   surprise
I saw them, for I remembered seeing them
   before
Not yet my own—tight skin and chiseled
   fingers
Stiff upon the bones—and now they were
Becoming mine, and they glowed with a light
Flying out of darkness. I looked up
At the windy heavens, rose, and found
The earth received my foot’s sure grip,
And walked on a curve of beach by the
   broken hermit crab,
The curved waves and the gray cliffs sloping
   away,
And I felt a desolation, a deep sorrow
For what I remembered and knew must be,
And the waves and the desolate curving
   space
Repeated in my mind, as a child returns
To a melancholy story that he loves.
My body hurt from its rising and its
   knowledge,
Familiarity of curving space and desolation,
And the vague glooms and the owlish night
Had music in them which, hearing now,
I wished to hear again, and, listening,
It came more richly sad and beautiful;
And death, not as oblivion,
But as repetition, as the musical return
To something that was always there,
As feeling known and knowledge felt,
Was in me who had risen from the dead:
This I recalled, this fullness of desolation,
And for all its pain (remembering the
    emptiness),
For all its sorrow (remembering the void),
It was enough, and so I loved the turning
   waters,
The windy heavens, fired with a golden light,
And the scramble of birds to take the air.
And I looked down at the stone and
   knew it,
And named it with the many names of praise,
And I knew the trees and animals,
And my moods were like the gestures of the
   leaves,
My energies like birds and animals,
And by their qualities I named myself
For what I knew already, and I was changed
And freshened, knowing myself again
And everything I still may be,
Knowing the wordy distraction in the greed
   of growing,
Locked in the abstract silence of the stone
And the syllabic warning of the sea.

III

And she was with me in the breathing of
   that day,
This too from the aching in my side I knew,
And great and little lights were framed
In heavenly dark, and velvet darkness
Framed the sensuous, inventing eye
And the ear’s deep treasury, both night
   and day.
And I knew and felt the touch of her,
The musical breathing of that time—
Each breath a blessing of the pear’s ripeness,
The melon’s roundness, tart perfection
Of autumn olive and summer grape,
The garden filling every breath, and her hair
Like colors of evening, and the sun
Holding back before repeating its descent,
Like the peak of pleasure while it neither
    rises
Nor has yet begun to fall away,
Before one repetition merges with another—
Whose desolate fullness, full with all
   green things,
But vacant, void of anticipation,
Empty of retrospect, I remembered
When I saw my hands stretched
   at my side,
And knew that this was not the first time
   I had died.

_____________

The Fall

And when I opened up my eyes I saw
The dawn-light frost the apple tree;
I stepped out of the big dream of the sea
Into the separated sky,
And walked the new-made glittering grass
Past golden peach and nectarine,
Past purple of the plum, awake in a riot
   of sense
And in the ceremony of the heart.
The big dream of the sea moved in my mind
With its multitude of fishes, currents of
   whales,
And salt fecundity, and so it was
At my waking I found her by my side.
What knowledge then, what thankfulness
And what unease, to wake and find a drear
Come true, and I spun in a vertigo
Of happenings not yet come, dream within
   dream,
And settled where the universe began.
In the beginning, I stirred in the dream
Of the chaos of empty winds, chaos
Of dark upon dark, motion without matter
And substance without form, but I knew
In the dream, in the unreal waiting,
In the unreal time, that what I dreamed
Was of a past eternally gone,
And when I opened up my eyes I saw
The dawn-light frost the apple tree.
The beginning, the separated heavens,
The sea and the land, the salt fecundity
And the innocence of animals—
All here in the garden as it had to be,
Fixed and waiting as in a memory
That draws you back within a dream,
And you wake to find the memory is true,
And the dream is what must come to be,
Fixed and waiting as in a memory.
And so it was at my waking I found her
By my side, true as she had to be,
True as the singing miracle of sky
   and birds,
True as the water’s blessing, the pensive oak,
And the graceful birch, and the frolic of
   squirrels
In a frolic of leaves—all true and dancing
In the new-made light, rounded in shadow
And the depth of shade—and, in the center,
In a riot of sense and in the ceremony
Of the heart, I opened up my eyes and saw
The dawn-light frost the apple tree.
And the dreaming in my mind conceived
The blame and the jealous blow and the tide
Of blood gathering to the sorrow of waters,
The animals, two by two, again
The monotony of peace, again the unheard
   cry
And the torturer’s escape, the depression
   of prophecy
And the ultimate anger of the fire—
Because of the beginning. And I remember
She was gone, and I knew why, and even
   though
It was a dream, I ran, hoping to stop her,
Trying to wake before I dreamed the
   beginning;
And I did, and all was forgotten,
And there, eyes closed, we lay together,
But I, not wanting to dream the beginning,
Remembering it did not have to be,
I opened up my eyes and saw
The dawn-light frost the apple tree.

_____________