Vine

Herman Salinger

Lord, I am withered and sick,
And grounded my seed and my sight.
My self is dead as a stick -
Let me climb again to the light.
Let me stretch to you as a vine
Stretches from stones and dust.
The climbing will be mine;
Then burn me if you must.
For a vine is not a tree
And its deaths are many and quick.
I have known what it is to be
A vine and to be a stick.
Now my life has shrunk to a thread
And hidden itself in sand.
The sun pulls overhead,
And under me the land:
To be a vine no more
Nor ever an airy leaf,
But seek the downward core
And be a root in my grief,
Till through me pulse the change,
And the urging in me turns
Upward into the strange,
Into the light that burns;

The open air that drifts
And will not let me be,
And the face of the sun that lifts
My root into stem and tree.
Long is the night underground
Where the sun is only a spark,
And slow the way is found
Out of this death in the dark.