Now I become myself...

Amongst the many books that I have on the go at the moment is Parker J Palmers wonderful book, 'Let Your Life Speak', (which I am re-reading for the 'n'th time) all about Vocation and Discernment.  In the second chapter are a few lines from a poem by May Sarton that I had never read in its entirety until yesterday...which is very shoddy of me as it is one of the most beautiful, moving and inspiring peices that I think I have ever read.


And so, I share it...


'Now I become myself'


Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!
May Sarton