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From “High Places”
I DO not know if there is God, | |
| The centre of this whirling orb | |
| Making and unmaking. | |
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| I do not know if there is God— | |
| But there’s a spirit in the wood. | 5 |
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| That was it where once the lupin shook, | |
| And there it laughed | |
| Between two gurgles of the brook. | |
| Warm silence and the windless stir | |
| Along my sides where once was fur, | 10 |
| And nameless fierce temptations in my blood. | |
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| Or when the dawn is like a trumpet laid | |
| To the sea’s lips that are curved keen for it, | |
| When the wet beach is gleaming like a shell | |
| And all the foreshore whispers in green fire, | 15 |
| I have felt that spirit pass, | |
| Stalking the young winds in the grass. | |
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| I do not know if there is God— | |
| But when my travail came, | |
| And every sense went weltering blind | 20 |
| ’Round jagged rocks of pain, | |
| There is a Swimmer in the surf | |
| Rode with us down the staggering gulf | |
| And brought us safe to land. | |
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| The hurrying hearse whisked out of sight, | 25 |
| The sexton cleaned his spade on the grass, | |
| (My grief was stiff like the slithering clay) | |
| And the mourners put up their veils. | |
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| There was a Spirit blew | |
| The graveyard dust in my face: | 30 |
| “‘Earth unto earth,’ was said of you, | |
| For something of you has gone into the ground | |
| With the child that you made at your body’s cost. | |
| And a sea-blue lilac can not toss, | |
| Nor the white corn tassel, row on row, | 35 |
| But something of you has entered there. | |
| The brown corn-silk is the brown of her hair, | |
| And the pink of her mouth you will find again | |
| Delicately folded lip on lip, | |
| In the budding tips of the apricot boughs. | 40 |
| For nothing can ever divide you now | |
| From the earth you have made with your dead.” | |
| That was a thing | |
| Only a Spirit could have said. | |
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