The Ways

Pauline Hanson

In the fields of evening where
Another April held the somewhile
Of the not day and the not night,
I saw, who looked with April sight,
That where the yellow legendflowers
Folded the yellow legend in,
The way was in the luminous spring
And then in the remembering.

Where the constant winter was,
Where and from myself I went
Into the soft and softer sweep
Of snow on snow already deep;
Where once and into white the way
Was to the everywhere of winter,
Was where I found and could not keep
The wish of winter and of sleep,

When I went the way of wonder
There such wonder oh I found,
That far and from the only now
And while the small stars sang me how,
I lightly and yet lightlier went
Until and all the singing night
I found the where and found the why
Of time not come and time gone by


If now come back I cannot name
What having named me names me still-
When I went to your awaylands
And you put out your wanting hands,
Love into love we went and then
And dreamed into some dreamdark self
Of our remembering, it was
Like lost, like found, like always love.

When I put the body off
What was I and what was it said-
All the way of pain and then
All the afterway again-
If I come back will I not wait
Where the forever brooding blood
Has whispered me the slow despair
Of which I must and make no prayer?

And was a stranger of myself
And went into the otherworld
And to the mysteries of madness
Until so sweet it seemed no madness
Until so sweet it seemed the sweetest
The sanities of every sense
And otherwords that said still say
This inward is this outward way

What the mind can never know
The heart remembers. And the heart,

As it has sometimes found its grace,
Sometimes speaks it in this place
Where nothing names us and we dream
To yesterday and to tomorrow
And never of our knowledge know
The way we come, the way we go.