poem.txt

Lately having escaped three-kinded death 
Not by evasion but by coming through
I celebrate what may be true beginning.

But new begun am most without resource 
Stupid and stopped. 
How do the newborn grow? I am of them. 
Freshness has taken our hearts; 
Pain strips us to the source, infants of further life 
Waiting for childhood as we wait for form.

So came I into the world of all the living
The maimed triumphant middle of my way 
Where there is giving needing no forgiving. 
Saw now the present that is here to say: 
Nothing I wrote is what I must see written, 
Nothing I did is what I now need done.— 
The smile of darkness on my song and my son.

Lately emerged I have seen unfounded houses, 
Have seen spirits not opened, surrounded as by sun, 
And have, among limitless consensual faces 
Watched all things change, an unbuilt house inherit 
Materials of desire, that stone and wood and air.
Lit by a birth, I defend dark beginnings,
Waste that is never waste, most-human giving, 
Declared and clear as the mortal body of grace.

Beginnings of truth-in-life, the rooms of wilderness 
Where truth feeds and the ramifying heart,
Even mine, praising even the past in its pieces,
My tearflesh beckoner who brought me to this place.