They want me to be
the dark, wild songs of childhood.
And I loved those songs, I loved
that infinite singing.
I loved to set my locked-barn heart
on fire, all the horses tossing in their halters. I loved
to hear the moon inside the moon.
Friends, I have found out
the secret. I am powerless
as the river is
in flood-time, changed
by the work of its becoming, going
where it has to go, in coldness.
My loves, my dust, my no one,
I kneel now
in the dark of the cathedral
of all the absences in my little life
and I hear it now, the work
that I was made for. I hear
it now, the god
inside the moon.
Listen. Come near to me
and listen. I promise, I swear
this is the mystery:
There are the first, wild silences of childhood
that break us
with the weight of them, the staying,
and the song we sing
to hide those wild silences,
and the final song, the greatest song
of all of them, the one that comes
so clear and lived and simple
it makes the silence stay
until it changes, and it knows
no ghosts, and opens, opens wholly,
and blooms like things with nothing left to prove.
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