From the Kenyon Review, Fall 1955, Vol. XVII, No. 4
Suddenly.
Suddenly and certainly, while I watched elsewhere, locked
And intent in that vigil in which the hunter is the hunted
As the mind is, seeking itself, falconer, falcon and hawk, victor
and victim,
Aware of the dry river beds, the droughts of the little deaths,
Sudden and overwhelming
Years rose and the damned waters of deepest nature’s secret
underseas:
Where I had been before, waiting, tense and tired, was the edge
of a winter wood,
The gun of the mind ached in my numb and narrowed gaze,
Trembled a little, aimed at the pathless wood, and the snow-
clouded icewhite sky,
Hearing not the rush of the birds rising from bush and thicket,
thrashing and clacking,
But suddenly the pouring continuous sibilance of waterfalls,
Certainly and suddenly for a moment’s eternity it was the ecstasy
and the stillness of the white wizard blizzard, the white
god, fallen and united, entirely whiteness,
the color of forgiveness, beginning and hope.
Quickly again and certainly it was the river of summer, blue as
the infinite curving blue above us:
Little boats at anchor lolled and were lapped; and a yacht slowly
glided:
It was wholly holiday, holiday absolute, a silk and saraband day,
warm and gay and
Blue and white and vibrant as the pennants buoyant upon the
stadium near us,
White, a milk whiteness, and also all colors flaring, melting or
flowing:
There hope was, and the hopes, and the years past, used and
wasted,
The beings I had known and forgotten and half-remembered or
remembered too often:
Some in rowboats, sunned, as on a picnic; waiting, as before a
play: the picnic and the play of eternity
As summer, siesta, and summit
—How could I have known how the years and the hopes were
human beings hated or loved
Or known that they were other to me, both less and more than
I believed?
(Thus I questioned myself, in a voice unknown and yet my own)
—There they were, all of them, and I was with them,
They were with me, and they were me, and I was them, forever
united
As we all moved forward in consonance, silent and moving
As upon a great boat, flag-decked, flag-flowering over the white
sides
seated and gazing
upon the beautiful river forever.
So we were as children on the wooden horses, falling and rising,
of the carnival’s carrousel
Singing and sometimes smiling, as above us a small music tinkled,
the lyric of a music box
Saying: there is nothing to think but drink of knowledge and
love and love’s knowledge,
The task is a round, the round is a task, the task and the round
are a dance:
The last knowledge of love as the first, when thought’s abdication
supports thought’s exaltation,
When after and before are no more, nor masks and the unmask-
ing, but only the basking
(As the shining sea basks under the shining sun, in a radiance of
swords and chandeliers dancing)
In the last blessing and sunlight of love’s knowledge.
Suddenly, certainly
I hardly knew when my lips parted. Started to move slowly
As in the rehearsal of half-remembered, memorized
anthem, prayer or spell
of heart welling grateful recognition.
My lips trembled, fumbled, and in the depths and death
of thought
A murmur rose like the hidden humming of summer, when
June sleeps
In the serene radiance of warm light and green fulfillment:
Fumbling, feeling for what I had long supposed I had grasped
and cast aside as worthless,
the sparks and glitter of pleasure and knowledge
trivial and transient
—The phrases like faces came, both strange and lucid, separate
and united, sincere as pain,
With the unity of meaning and emotion long lost, disbelieved or
denied
As I sought in the words I had known to possess their burden:
“I did not know . . . and I knew . . . surely I once knew . . .
I must have known
. . . Surely sometimes guessed or suspected . . .
Knew and did not know what love is,
The measure of pleasure, the heart of joy, the light and the heart
of the light which makes pleasure,
joy and love come to being
As light alone gives to all colors being, so this light is
Which is love . . . Love? . . . Is love ? . . What is love ?
Clearly and surely I saw how the measure and treasure of
pleasure and joy is being as being with, belonging,—
Figured and touched in the experience of voices in chorus:
Withness is ripeness,
Ripeness is withness,
To be is to be in love,
To be is to be in love,
Love is the fullness of being.
For the gratification of action by those who enact it and at once
In the enacting behold it, actual and antiphonal, as antiphonal, in
another, in others, in all the others who, being with
them, toiling and smiling, looked to each other, and
Know the act as their enaction, yet at once another’s and others’,
suffering the struggling,
The effort of effort, as in the toil and ecstasy of climbing and
dancing:
Then: when they know immediately within them what they see
immediately without them, vivid in the faces,
lucid in the voices
Each creating and increasing in the other as fire in fire,
Thus, as the lover knows yes, knows loving and being loved, then
Kissing as he is kissed: then only effort is gratitude, only then
toil is ecstasy,
Suffering is satisfaction, satisfaction is pain, and both are neither
but a third
Beyond and containing the fear and the striving, the desire and
the fire, the excitement of privation, the reality of
consummation, the great wings of rapture,
throbbing and soaring:
Then the self is another and most itself, wholly itself and
wholly other, in a being beyond loving and
being beloved:
Is neither no more and both, sustaining both and surpassing them
as it rises to the pure perfected being of being
Self-hooded selfhood seeks in the darkness and daylight
blinded and lost.
Suddenly, certainly, it was as waking in the waters of morning,
in winter:
Surely it was the first morning once more,
Waking in the first morning to a world outside of whiteness
united,
Transfigured, possessed by the blessedness of whiteness and light,
A whiteness which is light and more than light, containing all
colors,
And the inner morning and meaning of light, bearing within
itself all
Love, all distinction, giving the world to the self,
the self to the world.
Then, surely, it was the moment when Adam
As, each of us, gazed first upon another self, looked
upon a self which as his own seemed, looked at,
yet another, absolute as other, being no less than
everything,
being the beginning of being as love and love as being
—So, surely, the first strangeness rippled to recognition
unbelievable, growing like morning—
Then when the self is another and most itself, neither and both,
Possessing and possessed by the being of being,
purely and wholly,
Then when consummation is exaltation and surrender,
The event is comparable to the ultimate experience of things as
they are
Turning to flame, united in blaze, burning in the agony and new
birth which is the apotheosis of fire!
Then certainly it was again the little moment of eternity when
Lazarus
Thrusting aside the cold sweated linens,
Summoned by Jesus, snow and morning
Thrust the stone to one side, the fell conclusion,
And knew all astonishment for the first time, wonderstruck
Not that he lived again after death, (after the box; the wood,
felt; the lid, shutting; nails and black silence,
painless and effortless as luxury)
But that he had ever died! Knew the illusion of death
confused with the reality of the agony of dying,
Knowing at last that death is inconceivable among the living,
Hearing the thunder of the news of the waking from the false
dream of life that life can ever end.
