From Men Who Died Deluded

This is the time to speak to those who will come after,

To those who will climb the mountain-tops although

The continual clouds have crept down upon us

And we cannot tell any more how far there is to go.

This is the time to set our lips on great horns and blow

Far down the years a note to reach them when

They are failing on the crest before the end,

To fall on their ears like a sweet hail from men.

Who did not reach so far but blessed their march,

From men who died deluded, far below the peak,

The self-destroyed, unwilling, blinded, caught,

Yet who believed, yet who desired to speak‑

Dying, to blow a horn for those who come after,

despairing, to send up one clear note from the edge of death

And as the victors falter to salute them proudly

With the hope we cherished with our final breath.

This is the time, this dark time, this bewildered

To give our mortal lives that the great peaceful places

May surely be attained by those who, when they falter,

Must be confronted by the living vision on our dead faces.
May Sarton (1912 - 1995)

Map For Despair

It is true that you live on a cold continent,
A mental climate of your own.
More than the shape of a cloud
You cannot expect,
The occasional magic of a storm of snow-
You can ask no more of it.
This is your island, created by yourself,
Set in a space without horizon:
A ship might offer escape,
A waving human arm might tempt with hope,
Might pull the little stone out of your breast
And substitute the magic and disaster of a face.
Now you have won this island,
Protect it with your utmost strength.
Pillow your head on your arm.
And for your loneliness at night,
And for your terrors,
There is a certain morning,
And for that question with no answer,
The careless comfort of the elements.
May Sarton (1912 - 1995)

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)

The Puritan

Once he was seduced by the soft luxurious hill,

The peace-inducing landscape, interminably green,

Where rivers are shallow, full of flowers and still,

Where the rain is gentle, falling without spleen.

Today he thinks of the bare pastures and the cedar trees,

The bitter land where a child is hardy and learns

To be fearful of his heart, to be wary of what he feels

Hiding among juniper bushes and the brown ferns.

He remembers the stone walls marking field from field,

Piled up out of infinite stones by the patient hand,

He thinks of the thin harvest that those pastures yield,

How the men are lean men, how it is a stern land.

He thinks of a country where roots are durable and deep,

Where the speech has a tang in it and is never mild,

Where the kind of peace is the snow coming sometimes like sleep,

So cold it would freeze up the tears of a soft child.
May Sarton (1912 - 1995)

You Who Ask Peace

You who as peace, peace is not in your nature,

        You cannot hope to rest,

Born as you were with that implacable creature

        Rooted in your breast.

Adamant is the heart, adamant, lonely, cruel,

        Beating against the bone,

Asking a savage question, the necessary fuel

        By which it lives alone.

Asking a savage question and not resigned,

        The starving heart

Takes its revenge upon the nobler mind

        And tears your peace apart.

May Sarton (1912 - 1995)

Week End

The taste of figs and cream, cool slipping down your

       throat,

the crisp white dresses gleaming against green,

the ping of tennis balls on the clipped grassy coat,

the brilliant voices, sudden silences, the wells

birds fill with liquid flutes and watery sounds,

the summer rustle purring in the leaves.

Lie here and let sun suck the marrow of distress,

change it to a fantastic dream, a nursery rhyme, a game

(You used to play it) ‘Still Pond, no more moving.'

The old kind-hearted dog will come to be caressed,

the cat with barley-sugar eyes run after bees

and then come back to rub against your knees.

Lie here face down and slip off into sleep;

Lie here at last and soak the sun of gentleness

into your veins.

This is the England dreamed of, the island of content,

the changeless statue in a garden,

the still pond, moving not.

May Sarton (1912 - 1995)

Winter Evening

The evenings are spun glass these winter days;
They stretch out clear above the dusty litter,
They quietly surround with a pale crystal haze,-
But just before the dark these evenings glitter.
Then for one moment under that clear glass
The fragile earth, the trees, all seem to shiver,
While hangs there, still, most beautiful and ominous,
The darkening sky reflected in the river,
While people peer out just before they pull
The comfortable shades and shut themselves away
From all that's ominous and beautiful,
From what they guess the night might have to say.
May Sarton (1912 - 1995)

Strangers

There have been two strangers

Who met within a wood

And looked once at each other

Where they stood.

And there have been two strangers

Who met among the heather

And did not look at all

But lay down together.

And there have been two strangers

Who met an April day

And looked long at each other,‑

And went their way.

May Sarton (1912 - 1995)