True North
—The Other Gravity—
Thou lovedst me because I answered joy
As quiet waters answer unto dawn,
Returning brightness with such faithful ease
That none could think another depth below
Withheld a darker weather from the light.
Whatever prospered in thy patient heart
Thou didst believe could prosper too in mine:
The ordered harvest and the temperate year,
The room made tranquil by familiar hours,
The modest peace that asks no witness save
Its own continuance.
I wished thee never disappointed.
Therefore I learnt thy weather by my pulse,
And called it mine before I knew the change.
There seemed no hour deserving of alarm.
No threshold offered warning to the foot.
The smallest alterations seldom ask
Permission of the life they come to rule.
The loss came not as sorrow, but as law.
I never heard my own voice growing faint;
It simply ceased arriving when I spoke.
Thereafter every kindness gathered weight.
I praised what left no dwelling in my breast.
My laughter found thee sooner than it found
The silence whence it once had learned to rise.
I walked the roads appointed to my feet,
Yet every mile concluded somewhere else.
No oath was broken.
Nothing was denied.
Only the inward axis altered where
Its hidden burden found another weight.
Nothing within the compass failed its north;
The north became the habit of another.
Thou wert not cruel.
Love needeth no dominion to persuade.
It asketh only that another's joy
Become the climate of another's blood,
Until the seasons answer without thought.
The rain arrived on every waiting roof;
My drought had learnt to fall from underneath.
The windows welcomed all the morning in;
My light arrived from where my sun had been.
Then came a day no calendar foresaw.
One morning every mirror told the truth;
None of them happened to remember me.
No cry disturbed the ordinary air.
The floor received my foot with equal grace.
The trees maintained their covenant with wind.
The earth omitted nothing from its course.
Only the measure by which I belonged
Had travelled farther than my name could reach.
Thought loosened, not by wisdom, nor by sleep,
But as deep rivers loosen into sea
Without debating where the banks have gone.
Thereafter every branch retained its birds,
Though none had any further need to sing.
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