("In my childhood when I first...")

Poetry for October 1956

VOL. LXXXIX NO: 1

FOUNDED 1912 by NARRIET MONROE

seven poems for marthe, my wife

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In my childhood when I first

Saw myself unfolded in

The triple mirrors, in my

Youth, when I pursued myself

Wandering on wandering

Nightbound roads like a roving

Masterless dog, when I met

Myself on sharp peaks of ice,

And tasted myself dissolved

In the lulling heavy sea,

In the talking night, in the

Spiralling stars, what did I

Know? What do I know now,

Of myself, of the others?

Blood flows out to the fleeing

Nebulae, and flows back, red

With all the worn space of space,

Old with all the time of time.

It is my blood. I cannot

Taste in it as it leaves me

More of myself than on its

Return. I can see in it

Trees of silence and fire.

In the mirrors of its waves

I can see faces. Mostly

They are your face. On its streams

I can see the soft moonlight

On the Canal du Midi.

I can see the leaf shadows

Of the plane trees on the deep

Fluids of your eyes, and the

Golden fires and lamps of years.

il