| From the book The Wild Rose | Legends and Fantasies
(1976 - 1978) |  |
| Leavetaking | I
I dreamed that leavetaking had come
and rose over our troubled water.
Vision was confused, like an exhortation
on major disasters over a minor disaster,
on the fact that leavetaking is still an outline,
an empty sketch that we know from somewhere.
But here like a ring from a fortune-telling cup
it manifested its embodiment from silent life,
and crying, disturbing and looking at it,
it stood there like my desire.
II
As from layers which we do not look into
they would shake and smooth out a living vision
to a sick wild beast from the edge of creation,
and a second childhood would bend over it,
so that unnoticing it he should take leave of suffering,
taught by the last and first desire.
So he shovels away the darkness like wool,
and senses, as he falls to the nipple,
the dry flanks of the new wet-nurse
and the terrifying sweetness of her milk.
III
I am also one of those who needs nothing more,
and will stand, disappearing from sight,
like a glass terrace from a dark garden,
admiring the rain that pours down on us,
like a living fence full of heart
by the windows while it is still scarce light.
The fence of leavetaking and remembrance,
the healing clothes, that clung to knowledge,
and someone approaches the window and nods
to the face of dreaming, embarrassment, and rain. | | Richard McKane | |
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