Frederick R. McCreary

From “Hillside Poems”

ALONE on the hill

In the warm October noon,

With the woods below

And beyond their brilliance the sea:

The moment has come,

The rapt still instant of being,

When water and wood are gone.

There is nothing now

But the on-running fluid of hours

Gleaming with blue, yellow, crimson.

Now quick! Let me run on sharp stones,

Let me strangle in surf choked with the bitter salt-water!

Let me feel pain, feel torture,

And the acid hunger of loneliness!

Give me self, self—

Before I am lost

In this madness of space eternal,

This horror of dream triumphant.