O I have seen the heaven of good deeds spread
With its own sky above it
A length away
My whole day,
Yet have not crossed from the ungathered dead.
I could have leapt straight from the womb to bliss
And never lost it after,
Been cradled, baptized, bred in that which is
And never known this frontier laughter,
But that I hate this place so much,
And hating love it,
And that my weakness is such
That it must clutch
All weakness to it and can never release
The bound and battling hands,
The one hand bound, the other smiting
The fellow-foe it’s tied to, fighting
Weakness with weakness, rending, righting
The torn and incorruptible bands
That bind all these united and disunited lands
While there lies my predestined power and ease,
There, in those natural fields, life-fostering seas.
If I could be more weak
Than weakness’ self, if I could break
This static clinch with a mere blank, with nothing,
If I could take
Memory and longing
Up by the roots and cast them behind my back,
If I could stop this endless ringing and singing
That keeps my fingers flying in hate and love,
If I could cut off,
If I could unmake
What I was made to make:
But that I then should lose
My loss,
My kingdom’s crown,
And to great Nothing toss
My last left jewel down,
The light that long before me was,
The land I did not own,
The choice I could not choose.
For once I played upon that other hill,
And from that house I come.
There is a line around it still,
And all inside is home.
Once there I pored on every stone and tree
In a long dream through the unsetting day,
And looking up could nothing see
But the right way on every way.
And lost it after,
No foot knows where,
To find this mourning air,
Commemorative laughter,
The mask, the doom
Written backwards,
The illegible tomb
Pointing backwards,
The reverse side
Where strength is weakness,
The body, pride,
The soul, a sickness.
Yet from that missing heaven outspread,
Forgotten and unforgotten,
Begotten and unbegotten,
Here all I read.