PRISONER AT A DESK

I Love You

a poem by May Sarton

“It is not so much trying to keep alive

As trying to keep from blowing apart

From inner explosions every day.

I sit here, open to psychic changes,

Living myself as if I were a land,

Or mountain weather, the quick cycles

Where we are tossed from the ice age

To bursts of spring, to sudden torrents

Of rain like tears breaking through iron.

It is all I can do to keep tethered down.

No prisoner at a desk, but an ocean

Or forest where waves and gentle leaves

And strange wild beasts under the groves

And whales in all their beauty under the blue

Can gently rove together, still untamed,

Where all opens and breathes and can grow.

Whatever I have learned of good behavior

Withers before these primal powers.

Here at the center governess or censor

No longer has command. The soul is here,

Inviolable splendor that exists alone.

Prisoner at a desk? No, universe of feeling

Where everything is seen, and nothing mine

To plead with or possess, only partake of,

As if at times I could put out a hand

And touch the lion head, the unicorn.

Here there is nothing, no one, not a sound

Except the distant rumor, the huge cloud

Of archetypal images that feed me …

Look, there are finches at the feeder.

My parrot screams with fear at a cloud.

Hyacinths are budding. Light is longer.”

Sarton, May. May Sarton: A Self-Portrait (pp. 37-38). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition.

ART: LJ Austin “The Watering Hole” 2016