“The edge is what I have”

by DRM

In a Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deep­en­ing shade;
I hear my echo in the echo­ing wood–
A lord of nature weep­ing to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and ser­pents of the den.

What’s mad­ness but nobil­ity of soul
At odds with cir­cum­stance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweat­ing wall,
That place among the rocks–is it a cave,
Or wind­ing path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of cor­re­spon­dences!
A night flow­ing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the mid­night come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is–
Death of the self in a long, tear­less night,
All nat­ural shapes blaz­ing unnat­ural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened sum­mer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tear­ing wind.

Theodore Roethke

Photo: The Moan­ing Wind by Car­men Gonzalez

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