The Whole Motion: Collected Poems, 1945–1992

Near Darien

NearDarien It may be the sea-moving moon Is swayed upon the waves by what I do. I make on the night no shade, But a small-stepping sound upon water. I have rowed toward the moon for miles, Till the lights upon shore have been blown Slowly out by my infinite breath, By distance come slowly as age, And at last, on the heart-shaken boards Ofthe boat, I lie down, Beginning to sleep, sustained By a huge, ruined stone in the sky As it draws the lost tide-water flat, And the wind springs into the sea, And for miles on the calming surface The moon creeps into its image. Inside the one flame ofthat stone My breath sheds the light ofthe sun, All water shines down out ofHeaven, And the things upon shore that I love Are immortal, inescapable, there. I know one human love, And soon it must find me out. I shall float in the mind ofa woman Till the sun takes its breath from my mouth, And whispers to my wife upon the land, Who, like this unbalancing light, When the half-eaten stone in the sky Pulls evenly, and the wind leaps out ofits life, Assembles upon this place, And finds me exultantly sleeping, My ear going down to the floor Ofthe sea, overhearing, not fish, Their gills like a bracken all swaying, But man and wife breathing together. I shall row from the sun to the beach, Into the Stone / 68 Where she shall have risen from darkness, From her vast, shining place in the moonlight, Where a man slaved for hours to reach her And lie in the quick ofher image. She shall stand to her knees in her shadow, Gazing outward, her eyes unshaded, As I ride blindly home from the sun, Not wishing to know how she came there, Commanded by glorious powers: At night by the night's one stone Laid openly on the lost waves, By her eyes catching fire in the morning. Into the Stone On the way to a woman, I give My heart all the way into moonlight. Now down from all sides it is beating. The moon turns around in the fix Ifits light; its other side totally shines. Like the dead, I have newly arisen, Amazed by the light I can throw. Stand waiting, my love, where you are, For slowly amazed I come forward From my bed through the land between, Through the stone held in air by my heartbeat. My thin flesh is shed by my shadow; My hair has turned white with a thought. No thing that shall die as I step May fall, or not sing ofrebirth. Very far from myselfI come toward you In the fire ofthe sun, dead-locked With the moon's new face in its glory. I see by the dark side oflight. I am he who I should have become. A bird that has died overhead Sings a song to sustain him forever. Into the Stone / 69 ...