Login
|
Join PoetrySoup
Advanced Poem Search
Home
Submit Poem
Contests
Member
Poems
Poets
Famous
Poems
Poets
Quotes
Lyrics
Terms
Forms
Forum
News
Articles
Blogs
Fun
Member Area
Member Area
My Poems
My Profile
My Inboxes
My Outboxes
Submit Poem
Soup Social
The Wall
Chat Room
Soup Facebook Page
Poetry Forum
Events Calendar
Who is Online
Past Polls (Archives)
Member Poets/Poems
Premium Members For Life
Poets
Poets - New
Poets - by Country
Poets - Top 100 Poems
Poets - Top 100 Popular
Poets - Top 100 Contests
Poets - Top 100 Community
Poems
Poems - Best Poems
Poems - by Country
Poems - Hindi
Poems - Long Poems
Poems - New
Poems - New by Poet
Poems - Poem Topics
Poems - Poetry
Poems - Random Poem
Poems - Read Poems
Poems - Search Poems
Poems - Short Poems
Poems - Top 100 All-Time
Poems - Top 100 Recent
Poems - Unread
Poems - Urdu
Famous Poets/Poems
Famous Poets
Famous Poets - All
Famous Poets - Beat
Famous Poets - Best
Famous Poets - Biographies
Famous Poets - Black
Famous Poets - by Country
Famous Poets - Classical
Famous Poets - English
Famous Poets - Hindi
Famous Poets - Jewish
Famous Poets - Metaphysical
Famous Poets - Modern
Famous Poets - Popular
Famous Poets - Quotes
Famous Poets - Romantic
Famous Poets - Top 100
Famous Poets - Urdu
Famous Poets - Women
Famous Poems
Famous Poems - Best
Famous Poems - Black
Famous Poems - Category
Famous Poems - Classical
Famous Poems - English
Famous Poems - Random
Famous Poems - Short
Famous Poems - Top 100
Contests
Contests: by PoetrySoup
Contests: by Members
Contest Winners: Soup
Contest Winners: Member
Contest Status: Member
Lyrics
Lyrics
Lyrics - Search
Resources
About PoetrySoup
The Bible
Character Counter
Cliches in Poetry
Common English Words
Copyright Information
Dictionary
eBooks - Poetry
FAQs
Grammar
Haiku Syllable Counter
History of Poetry
Homonyms
Homophones
How to Write a Poem
Love Poem Generator
Meter and Foot in Poetry
National Poetry Month
Poet Laureate
Poetics
Poetics of Aristotle
Poetry For Kids
Poetry
Poetry Definitions
Poetry Slam
Poetry Store
Poetry Out Loud
Prose
Publishing
Punctuation in Poetry
Quotes - Quotations
Resources - External
Resources - For Teachers
Rhyming Dictionary
Rhyme in Poetry
Spell Checker
Syllables
Syllable Counter
Syllable Rules
Teaching Prose and Poetry
Thesaurus
Videos: Poetry/Writing
What is Good Poetry?
What is Poetry?
Word Counter
Email Poem
From Email:
To Email:
Subject
Personal Note:
Poem Title:
Poem
I. I dream of you walking at night along the streams of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs of birds opening around you as you walk. You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep. II. This comes after silence. Was it something I said that bound me to you, some mere promise or, worse, the fear of loneliness and death? A man lost in the woods in the dark, I stood still and said nothing. And then there rose in me, like the earth's empowering brew rising in root and branch, the words of a dream of you I did not know I had dreamed. I was a wanderer who feels the solace of his native land under his feet again and moving in his blood. I went on, blind and faithful. Where I stepped my track was there to steady me. It was no abyss that lay before me, but only the level ground. III. Sometimes our life reminds me of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing and in that opening a house, an orchard and garden, comfortable shades, and flowers red and yellow in the sun, a pattern made in the light for the light to return to. The forest is mostly dark, its ways to be made anew day after day, the dark richer than the light and more blessed, provided we stay brave enough to keep on going in. IV. How many times have I come to you out of my head with joy, if ever a man was, for to approach you I have given up the light and all directions. I come to you lost, wholly trusting as a man who goes into the forest unarmed. It is as though I descend slowly earthward out of the air. I rest in peace in you, when I arrive at last. V. Our bond is no little economy based on the exchange of my love and work for yours, so much for so much of an expendable fund. We don't know what its limits are-- that puts us in the dark. We are more together than we know, how else could we keep on discovering we are more together than we thought? You are the known way leading always to the unknown, and you are the known place to which the unknown is always leading me back. More blessed in you than I know, I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing not belittled by my saying that I possess it. Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a blessing a man may be hard up to be worthy of. He can only accept it, as a plant accepts from all the bounty of the light enough to live, and then accepts the dark, passing unencumbered back to the earth, as I have fallen tine and again from the great strength of my desire, helpless, into your arms. VI. What I am learning to give you is my death to set you free of me, and me from myself into the dark and the new light. Like the water of a deep stream, love is always too much. We did not make it. Though we drink till we burst we cannot have it all, or want it all. In its abundance it survives our thirst. In the evening we come down to the shore to drink our fill, and sleep, while it flows through the regions of the dark. It does not hold us, except we keep returning to its rich waters thirsty. We enter, willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy. VII. I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark, containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning. I give you the life I have let live for the love of you: a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road, the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life that we have planted in the ground, as I have planted mine in you. I give you my love for all beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself again and again, and satisfy--and this poem, no more mine than any man's who has loved a woman.
CAPTCHA Preview
Type the characters you see in the picture