How Can I Go

John Russell McCarthy

I shall not die until the tree,
Burned and vanished utterly,
Yields up its singing part of me.

Old paths wind through my earthlihood,
As paths might wind through any wood.
I am the moon by night; the sun
Breathes through my mornings, every one.

How can I take my little scars
Beyond my deeper self, the sea?
How can I go beyond the stars
While yet the stars are part of me?

So take the weary house I flee
When I burst forth adventuring,
And let it lie beneath the tree
Through which, a living wind, I sing.