Now I Become Myself

 

                                    

Now I become myself. It's taken

Time, many years and places;

I have been dissolved and shaken,

Worn other people's faces,

Run madly, as if Time were there,

Terribly old, crying a warning,

"Hurry, you will be dead before--"

(What? Before you reach the morning?

Or the end of the poem is clear?

Or love safe in the walled city?)

Now to stand still, to be here,

Feel my own weight and density!

The black shadow on the paper

Is my hand; the shadow on the paper

As thought shapes the shaper

Falls heavy on the pages, is heard.

All fuses now, falls into places

From wish to action, word to silence,

My work, my love, my time, my face

Gathered into one intense

Gesture oof growing like a plant.

As slowly as the ripening fruit

Fertile, detached, and always spent,

Falls but does not exhaust the root,

So all the poem is, can give,

Grows in me to become the song,

Made so and rooted by love.

Now there is time and Time is young.

O, in this single hourr I live

All of myself and do not move.

I, the pursued, who madly ran,

Stand still, sand still, and stop the sun!