Transition

Here we are living in complete suspense,
There is a layer of time on earth, a snow;
Beneath the planted foot there is a silence,
The step falls soundlessly without an echo.

This world is negative, without precision,
We wander in it but cannot make a path,
We move across it in perpetual transition,
Perpetual journeying without an aftermath.

The light is half-light. If we fall asleep
It is to dream of an identical white landscape
Where we are never lost and never weep,
But where there is no rest and no escape.

This world is silence, an interminable season,
Suspense, a curious distorted place,
So that the young are ageless but will wizen,
The shape of lost direction in their face.

Interminable as snow time falls in silence,
Covering the little holes our feet have made,
We who are wanderers in complete suspense -
Who were living and still are not the dead.
May Sarton (1912 - 1995)