The Ways

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.