Photo Credit: Ruven Afanador
MAY SARTON
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 so stand still to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of 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 hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!
(I underlined the lines that connect the poem to the photograph for me.)
As soon as I saw this gorgeous photograph in The New Yorker (Oct. 11, 2004), I thought it looked like the organic imagination, the organic nature of writing, especially the kind of writing I do--the writing of self-discovery.
(The photo is really of MaryJane Butters, an organic farmer.)
Even writing that is not "autobiographical" is self-discovery, I believe, because through my writing I'm trying to discover how I'm connected to others, and to something greater than myself.
Sarton's lines: "My work, my love, my time, my face" /
"Gathered into one intense" / "Gesture of growing like a plant" are magnificent in the way they connect self to art.
3 comments:
I am totally not into this piece. It goves out like no meaning of words. It is like totally different from like other.....um......pieces. Your like writing is like so moving and now like it is like different. Do you like know what I am like saying. But the piece is like tolaty cool but not like cool. It needs like some more like fun! But you are like and tollaty good like author. It is like moving my like soul. Hope to see like some more from like such a great like author! Like I'll hear from like you!
Congrats on being a pick of the week. Keep up the writing!
Adam
journals.aol.com/pawsadam/chester
How I love this poem, this growing recognition of one's purpose. one's life's work. And how I see that magnificent, warm, living photograph accompanies Sarton's words so beautifully. If we let ourselves, we can develop roots, and grow below the surface so that in time, we can stand tall in the knowledge of what we each have to offer, be it art, or science, or counsel, or any other form of wisdom. This way, like that woman in the photograph, we can become one with the earth and the world around us.
Thank you for inspiring these thoughts, Theresa. You are becoming a Muse in your own right.
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