Home > Work > Collected Poems, 1930-1993
1 " Winter Grace It is autumn again and our anxiety blows With the wind, breaking the heart of the rose, Petals and leaves fall down and everything goes. All but the seed, all but the hard bright berry And the bulbs we kneel on the earth to bury And lay away with our anguish and our worry. It is time we learned again the winter grace To put the nerves to sleep in a dark place And smooth the lines in the self-tortured face. For we are at the end of our endurance nearly And we shall have to die this winter surely, For this is the end of more than a season clearly. Now we shall have to be poor, to yield up all, With the leaves wither, with the petals fall, Now we shall have to die, once and for all. Before the seed of faith so deep and still Pushes up gently through the frozen will And the joyless wake and learn to be joyful. Before this buried love leaps up from sorrow And doubt and violence and pity follow To greet the radiant morning and the swallow. "
― May Sarton , Collected Poems, 1930-1993
2 " Alive to the loving past She conjures her own. Nothing is wholly lost— Sun on the stone. And lilacs in their splendor Like lost friends Come back through grief to tell her Love never ends. "
3 " In Texas there’s so much space words have a way Of getting lost in the silence before they’re spoken So people hang on a long time to what they have to say; And when they say it the silence is not broken, But it absorbs the words and slowly gives them Over to miles of white-gold plains and grey-green hills, And they are part of that silence that outlives them. "
4 " I see you with that shell Held to your sensitive abstracted ear, Hunting the ocean’s rumor till you hear it well, Until you can set down the sound you hear:— Fixed to a shell like that you made immortal, This heart listens, this fragile auricle Holds rumor like your ocean’s, is a portal That sometimes opens to contain the miracle. If there are miracles we can record They happen in the places that you curse. Blessèd the pure in heart and the enduring word Sings of that love that spins the universe. My honor (and I cherish it for it is hardly won) Is to be pure in this: is to believe That to write down these perishable songs for one, For one alone, and out of love, is not to grieve But to build on the quicksand of despair A house where every man may take his ease, May come to shelter from the outer air, A little house where he may find his peace. "
5 " Journey by Train Stretched across counties, countries, the train Rushes faster than memory through the rain. The rise of each hill is a musical phrase. Listen to the rhythm of space, how it lies, How it rolls, how it reaches, what unwinding relays Of wood and meadow where the red cows graze Come back again and again to closed eyes— That garden, that pink farm, that village steeple, And here and there the solitary people Who stand arrested when express trains pass, That stillness of an orchard in deep grass. Yet landscapes flow like this toward a place, A point in time and memory’s own face. So when the clamor stops, we really climb Down to the earth, closing the curve of time, Meeting those we have left, to those we meet Bringing our whole life that has moved so fast, And now is gathered up and here at last, To unroll like a ribbon at their feet. "
6 " A Farewell For a while I shall still be leaving, Looking back at you as you slip away Into the magic islands of the mind. But for a while now all alive, believing That in a single poignant hour We did say all that we could ever say In a great flowing out of radiant power. It was like seeing and then going blind. After a while we shall be cut in two Between real islands where you live And a far shore where I’ll no longer keep The haunting image of your eyes, and you, As pupils widen, widen to deep black And I am able neither to love or grieve Between fulfillment and heartbreak. The time will come when I can go to sleep. But for a while still, centered at last, Contemplate a brief amazing union, Then watch you leave and then let you go. I must not go back to the murderous past Nor force a passage through to some safe landing, But float upon this moment of communion Entranced, astonished by pure understanding— Passionate love dissolved like summer snow. "