Home > Work > A Private Mythology: Poems
1 " Death and the Turtle"I watched the turtle dwindle day by day,Get more remote, lie limp upon my hand;When offered food he turned his head away;The emerald shell grew soft. Quite near the endThose withdrawn paws stretched out to graspHis long head in a poignant dying gesture.It was so strangely like a human clasp,My heart cracked for the brother creature.I buried him, wrapped in a lettuce leaf,The vivid eye sunk inward, a dull stone.So this was it, the universal grief:Each bears his own end knit up in the bone.Where are the dead? we ask, as we hurtleToward the dark, part of this strange creation,One with each limpet, leaf, and smallest turtle---Cry out for life, cry out in desperation!Who will remember you when I have gone,My darling ones, or who remember me?Only in our wild hearts the dead live on.Yet these frail engines bound to mysteryBreak the harsh turn of all creation's wheel,for we remember China, Greece, and Rome,Our mothers and our fathers, and we stealFrom death itself its rich store, and bring it home. "
― May Sarton , A Private Mythology: Poems
2 " An ObservationTrue gardeners cannot bear a gloveBetween the sure touch and the tender root,Must let their hands grow knotted as they moveWith a rough sensitivity aboutUnder the earth, between the rock and shoot,Never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit.And so I watched my mother's hands grow scarred,She who could heal the wounded plant or friendWith the same vulnerable yet rigorous love;I minded once to see her beauty gnarled,But now her truth is given me to live,As I learn for myself we must be hardTo move among the tender with an open hand,And to stay sensitive up to the endPay with some toughness for a gentle world. "
