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    Collected Poems, 1930–1993
    Collected Poems, 1930–1993
    Collected Poems, 1930–1993
    Ebook704 pages6 hours

    Collected Poems, 1930–1993

    By May Sarton

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    A comprehensive volume collecting May Sarton’s poetry from over sixty years of work
    This collection spanning six decades exposes the charm and clarity of Sarton’s poetry to the fullest. Arranged in chronological order, it follows the transformation of her writing through a wide range of poetic forms and styles. Her poetry meditates on topics including the American landscape, aging, nature, the act of creating art, and self-study. This compendium from one of America’s most beloved poets will enthrall readers. 
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateMar 25, 2014
    ISBN9781480474369
    Collected Poems, 1930–1993
    Author

    May Sarton

    May Sarton (1912–1995) was born on May 3 in Wondelgem, Belgium, and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her first volume of poetry, Encounters in April, was published in 1937 and her first novel, The Single Hound, in 1938. Her novels A Shower of Summer Days, The Birth of a Grandfather, and Faithful Are the Wounds, as well as her poetry collection In Time Like Air, all received nominations for the National Book Award. An accomplished memoirist, Sarton came out as a lesbian in her 1965 book Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing. Her memoir Journal of a Solitude (1973) was an account of her experiences as a female artist. Sarton spent her later years in York, Maine, living and writing by the sea. In her last memoir, Endgame: A Journal of the Seventy-Ninth Year (1992), she shares her own personal thoughts on getting older. Her final poetry collection, Coming into Eighty, was published in 1994. Sarton died on July 16, 1995, in York, Maine.

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      Collected Poems, 1930–1993 - May Sarton

      Collected Poems

      1930 – 1993

      May Sarton

      To My Parents

      Mabel and George Sarton

      In Memoriam

      Contents

      Publisher’s Note

      Encounter in April (1930–1937)

      First Snow

      She Shall Be Called Woman

      Strangers

      Inner Landscape (1936–1938)

      Prayer before Work

      Architectural Image

      Understatement

      Summary

      Address to the Heart

      Memory of Swans

      After Silence

      Canticle

      From Men Who Died Deluded

      Afternoon on Washington Street

      Winter Evening

      A Letter to James Stephens

      The Lion and the Rose (1938–1948)

      Monticello

      Charleston Plantations

      Where the Peacock Cried

      In Texas

      Boulder Dam

      Colorado Mountains

      Of the Seasons

      Meditation in Sunlight

      Difficult Scene

      The Window

      The Lion and the Rose

      Indian Dances

      Santos: New Mexico

      Poet in Residence: The Students

      Campus

      Before Teaching

      After Teaching

      Place of Learning

      The Work of Happiness

      After a Train Journey

      O Who Can Tell?

      The Clavichord

      Song: Now let us honor with violin and flute

      In Memoriam

      Now Voyager

      My Sisters, O My Sisters

      The Lady and the Unicorn

      Question

      Perspective

      Return

      O Saisons! O Châteaux!

      These Pure Arches

      We Have Seen the Wind

      Homage to Flanders

      The Sacred Order

      What the Old Man Said

      Navigator

      Who Wakes

      Return to Chartres

      To the Living

      The Tortured

      The Birthday

      The Leaves of the Tree (1948–1950)

      Myth

      Song without Music

      The Swans

      The Second Spring

      Kot’s House

      To an Honest Friend

      Landscape Pursued by a Cloud

      Evening Music

      Lullaby

      Islands and Wells

      Boy by the Waterfall

      Poets and the Rain

      Winter Grace

      The Land of Silence (1950–1953)

      The First Autumn

      The Sacred Wood

      Summer Music

      As Does New Hampshire

      Transition

      Villanelle for Fireworks

      Provence

      Journey by Train

      Evening in France

      From All Our Journeys

      Where Warriors Stood

      Take Anguish for Companion

      Innumerable Friend

      The Caged Bird

      The Land of Silence

      Letter to an Indian Friend

      Of Prayer

      The Tree

      A Light Left On

      Because What I Want Most Is Permanence

      Song: This is the love I bring

      Leaves before the Wind

      In a Dry Land

      Prothalamion

      Kinds of Wind

      The Seas of Wheat

      These Images Remain:

      Now that the evening gathers up the day

      Even such fervor must seek out an end

      So to release the soul, search out the soul

      The rose has opened and is all accomplished

      But parting is return, the coming home

      The stone withstands, but the chisel destroys

      What angel can I leave, gentle and stern

      These images remain, these classic landscapes

      Here are the peaceful days we never knew

      Without the Violence

      Humpty Dumpty

      Giant in the Garden

      Journey toward Poetry

      Italian Garden

      Letter from Chicago

      On a Winter Night

      Now I Become Myself

      In Time Like Air (1953–1958)

      A Celebration for George Sarton

      Dialogue

      The Furies

      The Action of the Beautiful

      On Being Given Time

      The Metaphysical Garden

      Where Dream Begins

      Lament for Toby, a French Poodle

      Green Song

      These Were Her Nightly Journeys

      The Olive Grove

      Mediterranean

      At Muzot

      To the North

      After Four Years

      Somersault

      The Frog, that Naked Creature

      The Phoenix

      In Time Like Air

      Nativity

      Annunciation

      All Souls

      Lifting Stone

      Binding the Dragon

      The Fall

      The Other Place

      Definition

      Forethought

      A Pair of Hands

      My Father’s Death

      The Light Years

      Spring Day

      By Moonlight

      Reflections in a Double Mirror

      Death and the Lovers

      Cloud, Stone, Sun, Vine (1958–1961)

      A Divorce of Lovers

      Now these two warring halves are to be parted

      I shall not see the end of this unweaving

      One death’s true death, and that is—not to care

      Did you achieve this with a simple word?

      What price serenity these cruel days?

      Dear fellow-sufferer, dear cruelty

      Your greatness withers when it shuts out grief

      Now we have lost the heartways and the word

      What if a homing pigeon lost its home

      So drive back hating Love and loving Hate

      It does not mean that we shall find the place

      Others have cherished, perhaps loved me more

      Wild seas, wild seas, and the gulls veering close

      For all the loving words and difficult

      As I look out on the long swell of fields

      The cat sleeps on my desk in the pale sun

      After a night of driving rain, the skies

      These riches burst from every barren tree

      Where do I go? Nowhere. And who am I

      Now silence, silence, silence, and within it

      Moving In

      Reflections by a Fire

      Mud Season

      Spring Planting

      A Flower-Arranging Summer

      Hour of Proof

      Der Abschied

      A Private Mythology (1961–1966)

      The Beautiful Pauses

      A Child’s Japan

      A Country House

      Kyoko

      Japanese Prints

      Four Views of Fujiyama

      On the Way to Lake Chuzen-ji

      Lake Chuzen-ji

      Enkaku-ji, Zen Monastery

      Three Variations on a Theme

      Seen from a Train

      The Leopards at Nanzen-ji

      At Katsura, Imperial Villa

      The Inland Sea

      Tourist

      In a Bus

      Carp Garden

      A Nobleman’s House

      Inn at Kyoto

      An Exchange of Gifts

      The Stone Garden

      Wood, Paper, Stone

      The Approach—Calcutta

      Notes from India

      1. At Bhubaneswar

      2. At Kanarak

      3. At Puri

      4. At Fathpur Sikri

      In Kashmir

      The Sleeping God

      Birthday on the Acropolis

      Nostalgia for India

      On Patmos

      Another Island

      At Lindos

      At Delphi

      Ballads of the Traveler

      Lazarus

      Heureux Qui, Comme Ulysse…

      Of Havens

      The House in Winter

      Still Life in Snowstorm

      A Fugue of Wings

      An Observation

      Learning about Water

      An Artesian Well

      A Late Mowing

      A Country Incident

      Second Thoughts on the Abstract Gardens of Japan

      A Village Tale

      The Horse-Pulling

      Franz, a Goose

      Lovers at the Zoo

      Death and the Turtle

      Elegy for Meta

      Death of a Psychiatrist

      Conversation in Black and White

      The Walled Garden at Clondalkin

      A Recognition

      Joy in Provence

      Baroque Image

      As Does New Hampshire (1967)

      Winter Night

      March-Mad

      Metamorphosis

      Apple Tree in May

      A Glass of Water

      Stone Walls

      A Guest

      A Grain of Mustard Seed (1967–1971)

      A Ballad of the Sixties

      The Rock in the Snowball

      The Invocation to Kali

      The Kingdom of Kali

      The Concentration Camps

      The Time of Burning

      After the Tiger

      We’ll to the Woods No More, the Laurels Are Cut Down

      Night Watch

      Proteus

      A Last Word

      Girl with ’Cello

      The Muse as Medusa

      For Rosalind

      The Great Transparencies

      Friendship: The Storms

      Evening Walk in France

      Dutch Interior

      A Vision of Holland

      Bears and Waterfalls

      A Parrot

      Eine Kleine Snailmusik

      The Fig

      A Hard Death

      The Silence

      Annunciation

      At Chartres

      Once More at Chartres

      Jonah

      Easter Morning

      The Godhead as Lynx

      The Waves

      Beyond the Question

      Invocation

      A Durable Fire (1969–1972)

      Gestalt at Sixty

      Myself to Me

      Dear Solid Earth

      The Return of Aphrodite

      Inner Space

      Things Seen

      Mozart Again

      The Tree Peony

      A Chinese Landscape

      Reeds and Water

      The Snow Light

      Warning

      Surfers

      All Day I Was with Trees

      A Storm of Angels

      The Angels and the Furies

      After an Island

      Fulfillment

      The Autumn Sonnets:

      Under the leaves an infant love lies dead

      If I can let you go as trees let go

      I wake to gentle mist over the meadow

      I never thought that it could be, not once

      After a night of rain the brilliant screen

      As if the house were dying or already dead

      Twice I have set my heart upon a sharing

      I ponder it again and know for sure

      This was our testing year after the first

      We watched the waterfalls, rich and baroque

      For steadfast flame wood must be seasoned

      March in New England

      Composition

      Burial

      Of Grief

      Prisoner at a Desk

      Birthday Present

      Elegy for Louise Bogan

      Letters to a Psychiatrist: Christmas Letter, 1970

      The Fear of Angels

      The Action of Therapy

      I Speak of Change

      Easter 1971

      The Contemplation of Wisdom

      Halfway to Silence (1978–1980)

      Airs above the Ground

      Halfway to Silence

      After All These Years

      Two Songs

      The Oriole

      Old Trees

      A Voice

      The Balcony

      The Myths Return

      Time for Rich Silence

      Three Things

      The Lady of the Lake

      First Autumn

      Mal du Départ

      Jealousy

      Control

      Along a Brook

      Beggar, Queen, and Ghost

      The Country of Pain

      Out of Touch

      At the Black Rock

      The Turning of the Wind

      After the Storm

      Love

      Of Molluscs

      June Wind

      Late Autumn

      The Geese

      Autumn Sonnets

      Pruning the Orchard

      Old Lovers at the Ballet

      On Sark

      In Suffolk

      A Winter Notebook

      Of the Muse

      Letters from Maine (1984)

      Contemplation of Poussin

      A Farewell

      Letters from Maine:

      Yes, I am home again, and alone

      November opens the sky. I look out

      No letter from the muse. Time out

      There was your voice, astonishment

      From a distance the ocean looks calm

      When a woman feels alone, when the room

      Who has spoken of the unicorn in old age?

      When I heard you say in a brisk voice

      The muse of course airs out the inner world

      The muse is here, she who dazzled the air

      Twelve Below

      Dead Center

      Shell

      Correspondence

      Snow Fall

      For Monet

      The Cold Night

      Seascape

      After a Winter’s Silence

      Moose in the Morning

      April in Maine

      For Laurie

      Mourning to Do

      Survivors

      Who Knows Where the Joy Goes

      Ut Unium Sint

      An Elegy for Scrabble

      Cold Spring

      Intimation

      Letters to Myself

      The Seed

      The Consummation

      The Image Is a Garden

      The Silence Now (1986–1988)

      New Year Resolve

      The Silence Now

      Blizzard

      The Shirley Poppies

      Dream

      August Third

      Salt Lick

      Two Birthdays

      The House of Gathering

      Christmas Light

      Absence

      Wilderness Lost

      The Cosset Lamb

      AIDS

      To Those in the Limbo of Illness

      Destinations

      New Year Poem

      The Muse as Donkey

      Invocation

      The Smile

      The Phoenix Again

      Index

      A Biography of May Sarton

      Publisher’s Note

      Long before they were ever written down, poems were organized in lines. Since the invention of the printing press, readers have become increasingly conscious of looking at poems, rather than hearing them, but the function of the poetic line remains primarily sonic. Whether a poem is written in meter or in free verse, the lines introduce some kind of pattern into the ongoing syntax of the poem’s sentences; the lines make us experience those sentences differently. Reading a prose poem, we feel the strategic absence of line.

      But precisely because we’ve become so used to looking at poems, the function of line can be hard to describe. As James Longenbach writes in The Art of the Poetic Line, Line has no identity except in relation to other elements in the poem, especially the syntax of the poem’s sentences. It is not an abstract concept, and its qualities cannot be described generally or schematically. It cannot be associated reliably with the way we speak or breathe. Nor can its function be understood merely from its visual appearance on the page. Printed books altered our relationship to poetry by allowing us to see the lines more readily. What new challenges do electronic reading devices pose?

      In a printed book, the width of the page and the size of the type are fixed. Usually, because the page is wide enough and the type small enough, a line of poetry fits comfortably on the page: What you see is what you’re supposed to hear as a unit of sound. Sometimes, however, a long line may exceed the width of the page; the line continues, indented just below the beginning of the line. Readers of printed books have become accustomed to this convention, even if it may on some occasions seem ambiguous—particularly when some of the lines of a poem are already indented from the left-hand margin of the page.

      But unlike a printed book, which is stable, an ebook is a shape-shifter. Electronic type may be reflowed across a galaxy of applications and interfaces, across a variety of screens, from phone to tablet to computer. And because the reader of an ebook is empowered to change the size of the type, a poem’s original lineation may seem to be altered in many different ways. As the size of the type increases, the likelihood of any given line running over increases.

      Our typesetting standard for poetry is designed to register that when a line of poetry exceeds the width of the screen, the resulting run-over line should be indented, as it might be in a printed book. Take a look at John Ashbery’s Disclaimer as it appears in two different type sizes.

      poetrypoetry

      Each of these versions of the poem has the same number of lines: the number that Ashbery intended. But if you look at the second, third, and fifth lines of the second stanza in the right-hand version of Disclaimer, you’ll see the automatic indent; in the fifth line, for instance, the word ahead drops down and is indented. The automatic indent not only makes poems easier to read electronically; it also helps to retain the rhythmic shape of the line—the unit of sound—as the poet intended it. And to preserve the integrity of the line, words are never broken or hyphenated when the line must run over. Reading Disclaimer on the screen, you can be sure that the phrase you pause before the little bridge, sigh, and turn ahead is a complete line, while the phrase you pause before the little bridge, sigh, and turn is not.

      Open Road has adopted an electronic typesetting standard for poetry that ensures the clearest possible marking of both line breaks and stanza breaks, while at the same time handling the built-in function for resizing and reflowing text that all ereading devices possess. The first step is the appropriate semantic markup of the text, in which the formal elements distinguishing a poem, including lines, stanzas, and degrees of indentation, are tagged. Next, a style sheet that reads these tags must be designed, so that the formal elements of the poems are always displayed consistently. For instance, the style sheet reads the tags marking lines that the author himself has indented; should that indented line exceed the character capacity of a screen, the run-over part of the line will be indented further, and all such runovers will look the same. This combination of appropriate coding choices and style sheets makes it easy to display poems with complex indentations, no matter if the lines are metered or free, end-stopped or enjambed.

      Ultimately, there may be no way to account for every single variation in the way in which the lines of a poem are disposed visually on an electronic reading device, just as rare variations may challenge the conventions of the printed page, but with rigorous quality assessment and scrupulous proofreading, nearly every poem can be set electronically in accordance with its author’s intention. And in some regards, electronic typesetting increases our capacity to transcribe a poem accurately: In a printed book, there may be no way to distinguish a stanza break from a page break, but with an ereader, one has only to resize the text in question to discover if a break at the bottom of a page is intentional or accidental.

      Our goal in bringing out poetry in fully reflowable digital editions is to honor the sanctity of line and stanza as meticulously as possible—to allow readers to feel assured that the way the lines appear on the screen is an accurate embodiment of the way the author wants the lines to sound. Ever since poems began to be written down, the manner in which they ought to be written down has seemed equivocal; ambiguities have always resulted. By taking advantage of the technologies available in our time, our goal is to deliver the most satisfying reading experience possible.

      Encounter in

      April

      (1930 – 1937)

      First Snow

      This is the first soft snow

      That tiptoes up to your door

      As you sit by the fire and sew,

      That sifts through a crack in the floor

      And covers your hair with hoar.

      This is the stiffening wound

      Burning the heart of a deer

      Chased by a moon-white hound,

      This is the hunt and the queer

      Sick beating of feet that fear.

      This is the crisp despair

      Lying close to the marrow,

      Fallen out of the air

      Like frost on the narrow

      Bone of a shot sparrow.

      This is the love that will seize

      Savagely onto your mind

      And do whatever he please,

      This the despair, and a moon-blind

      Hound you will never bind.

      She Shall Be Called Woman

      Genesis II, 23

      1

      She did not cry out

      nor move.

      She lay quite still

      and leaned

      against the great curve

      of the earth,

      and her breast

      was like a fruit

      bursten of its own sweetness.

      She did not move

      nor cry out—

      she only looked down

      at the hand

      against her breast.

      She looked down

      at the naked hand

      and wept.

      She could not yet endure

      this delicate savage

      to lie upon her.

      She could not yet endure

      the blood to beat so there.

      She could not cope

      with the first ache

      of fullness.

      She lay quite still

      and looked down

      at the hand

      where blood was locked

      and longed to loose the blood

      and let it flow

      over her breast

      like rain.

      2

      Not on the earth

      but surely somewhere

      between the elements

      of air and sea

      she lay that night,

      no rim of bone to mark

      where body clove to body

      and no separate flesh,

      strangely impenetrable—

      O somewhere surely

      did she come

      to that clear place

      where sky and water meet

      and lay transparent there,

      knowing the wave.

      3

      She bore the wound of desire

      and it did not close,

      though she had tried

      to burn her hand

      and turn one pain

      into a simpler pain—

      yet it did not close.

      She had not known

      how strong

      the body’s will,

      how intricate

      the stirring of its litheness

      that lay now

      unstrung,

      like a bow—

      she saw herself

      disrupted at the center

      and torn.

      And she went into the sea

      because her core ached

      and there was no healing.

      4

      Not in denial, her peace.

      For there in the sea

      where she had wished

      to leave her body

      like a little garment,

      she saw now

      that not by severing this

      would finity be ended

      and the atom die,

      not so the pure abstract

      exist alone.

      From those vast places

      she must come back

      into her particle.

      She must put on again

      the little garment

      of hunger.

      Not in denial

      her appeasement,

      not yet.

      5

      For a long time

      it would be pain

      and weakness,

      and she who worshiped

      all straight things

      and the narrow breast

      would lie relaxed

      like an animal asleep,

      without strength.

      For a long time

      a consciousness possessed her

      that felt into all grief

      as if it were a wound

      within herself—

      a mouse with its tiny shriek

      would leave her

      drained and spent.

      The unanswerable body

      seemed

      held in an icy pity

      for all livingness—

      that was itself

      initiate.

      6

      And then one day

      all feeling

      slipped out from her skin

      until no finger’s consciousness remained,

      no pain—

      and she all turned

      to earth

      like abstract gravity.

      She did not know

      how she had come

      to close her separate lids

      nor where she learned

      the gesture of her sleeping,

      yet something in her slept

      most deeply

      and something in her

      lay like stone

      under a folded dress—

      she could not tell how long.

      7

      Her body was a city

      where the soul

      had lain asleep,

      and now she woke.

      She was aware

      down to extremity

      of how herself was charged,

      fiber electric,

      a hand under her breast

      could hear the dynamo.

      A hand upon her wrist

      could feel the pulse beat.

      She felt the atoms stir,

      the myriad expand

      and stir

      She looked at her hand—

      the mesh

      with its multitude of lines,

      the exquisite small hairs,

      the veins

      finding their way

      down to the nails,

      the nails themselves

      set in so firmly

      with half-moons

      at their base,

      the fine-set bone,

      knuckle and sinew,

      and she examined

      the mysterious legend

      upon the palm—

      this was her hand,

      a present someone had given her.

      And she looked at her breasts

      that were firm and full,

      standing straightly

      out from her chest,

      and were each a city

      mysteriously part

      of other cities.

      The earth itself

      was not more intricate,

      more lovely

      than these two

      cupped in her hands,

      heavy in her hands.

      Nothing ever was

      as wonderful as this.

      8

      She let her hands

      go softly down her skin,

      the curving rib,

      soft belly

      and slim thigh.

      She let her hands

      slip down

      as if they held a shift

      and she were trying it

      for the first time,

      a shining supple garment

      she would not want to lose:

      So did she clothe herself.

      9

      She would not ever be naked

      again—

      she would not know

      that nakedness

      that stretches to the brim

      and finds no shelter

      from the pure terrific

      light of space.

      The finite self

      had gathered

      and was born

      out of the infinite,

      was hers

      and whole.

      For the first time

      she knew what it meant

      to be made so

      and molded into this shape

      of a pear,

      this heaviness of curving fruit.

      10

      There were seeds

      within her

      that burst at intervals

      and for a little while

      she would come back

      to heaviness,

      and then before a surging miracle

      of blood,

      relax,

      and reidentify herself,

      each time more closely

      with the heart of life.

      "I am the beginning,

      the never-ending,

      the perfect tree."

      And she would lean

      again as once

      on the great curve of the earth,

      part of its turning,

      as distinctly part

      of the universe as a star—

      as unresistant,

      as completely rhythmical.

      Strangers

      There have been two strangers

      Who met within a wood

      And looked once at each other

      Where they stood.

      And there have been two strangers

      Who met among the heather

      And did not look at all

      But lay down together.

      And there have been two strangers

      Who met one April day

      And looked long at each other,

      And went their way.

      Inner

      Landscape

      (1936 – 1938)

      Prayer before Work

      Great one, austere,

      By whose intent the distant star

      Holds its course clear,

      Now make this spirit soar—

      Give it that ease.

      Out of the absolute

      Abstracted grief, comfortless, mute,

      Sound the clear note,

      Pure, piercing as the flute:

      Give it precision.

      Austere, great one,

      By whose grace the inalterable song

      May still be wrested from

      The corrupt lung:

      Give it strict form.

      Architectural Image

      Whatever finds its place now in this edifice

      Must be a buttress to the spire’s strict arrow,

      No arbitrary grace, no facile artifice

      Beyond its compass, absolute and narrow.

      Structure imponderable in its ascension,

      It is the central nerve, the living spine,

      Within it there exists a soaring tension,—

      Flight, but deriving from the sternest line.

      Whatever arches mold to gentle curve,

      Whatever flowers are curved into its face,

      Are thrown, are carved to decorate and serve

      That motion of a finger into space.

      All that is builded here is built to bind

      The gentle arch, the stone flower of desire

      Into the sterner vision of the mind:

      The structure of this passion is a spire.

      Understatement

      This wind, corruption in the city

      (Spirit pent up in an enclosure),

      That steals, seductive, without pity,

      The heart’s composure.

      Think of it gusting over a field today,

      Setting the cows to lowing with surprise,

      Spreading the sweet smell of manure and hay,

      Bringing tears to the eyes.

      Oh, there are places where this evil wind

      Would work a blessed charm,

      Where a wild thing like this warm wind

      Would do no harm.

      Summary

      In the end it is the dark for which all lovers pine.

      They cannot bear the light on their transparent faces,

      The light on nerves exposed like a design.

      They have a great need of sleep in foreign places,

      Of another country than the heart and another speech.

      In the end it is escape of which all lovers dream

      As men in prison dream of a stretch of beach.

      When they toss wide-eyed in their beds they may seem

      To think of the cruel mouth and the hard breast

      But

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