Return to the Desert

Running, I come, as fire to fire returning

To you, flame-world, unflecked by any tree

Between whose upper and whose nether burning

Creeps in no pale ambiguous greenery.

Slake thirst with fire, roll back the illusive mountain

That beckons beyond pain; make me confess

The shining waters of love's very fountain

Are but mirages born of separateness.

Deeper this need, this hunger fierce and clean

Recovering your white country as a tide

Homing to shore - not elsewhere do the wide

Earth-prospect and that country never seen

Appear so presently, so wholly, one,

And death but shadow between sun and sun.

Charlotte Kellogg

"LONG LIVE THE WEEDS"

Hopkins