How can I turn this wheel that turns my life,

Create another hand to move this hand

Not moved by me, who am not the mover,

Nor, though I love and hate, the lover,

The hater? Loves and hates are thrust

Upon me by the acrimonious dead,

The buried thesis, long since rusted knife,

Revengeful dust.

A stony or obstreperous head,

Though slain so squarely, can usurp my will

As I walk above it on the sunny hill.

Then how do I stand?

How can I here remake what there made me

And makes and remakes me still?

Set a new mark? Circumvent history?

Nothing can come of history but history,

The stationary storm that cannot bate

Its neutral violence,

The transitory solution that cannot wait,

The indecisive victory

That is like loss read backwards and cannot bring

Relief to you and me,

The jangling

Of all the voices of plant and beast and man

That have not made a harmony

Since first the great controversy began,

And cannot sink to silence

Unless a grace

Come of itself to wrap our souls in peace

Between the turning leaves of history and make

Ourselves ourselves, winnow the grudging grain,

And take

From that which made us that which will make us again.