The Diver

Listen, listen, and draw near:

Love is inexhaustible and full of fear.

DELMORE SCHWARTZ

He can't remain forever underwater,

Feeling his lungs contract and his shoulders tire

From pulling against a force which like a door

That will not open might induce despair

In one less willing to be compromised

By a power which he's never understood

Or dragged downstream, powerless and deprived

Of any willful course he might have had,

All for the sake of catching once or twice

A glimpse of elements unknown to him,

Which float in the dark and silence like the face

Of one in whose confusion he became

A self outside himself, and again a man,

Spent and cleansed in a chaos not his own.