Vine

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.