She's traveled almost everywhere To cities, valleys, islands: But longs now just to breathe the air Out in the verdant Highlands To walk along a keening wall Among the Summer heather; To stay until the mordant Fall Brings cold and windy weather She hears the pipes of old come through The ancient voices call her; The modern mother turns again Into the ancestral daughter
What does this ocean mean right now?
It’s voice is soft, I barely hear
The words its forming in the waves
I stand, attenuated, like a deer —
But stillness breaks before it forms
My mind, it never finds repose
Whatever, now, this ocean meant
Is lost to space,
For heaven
Only
Knows
[The photo is of the “Tree of Desire” sculpture, in Petrozavodsk, Russia. – Owen]
Nothing looks the way it is,
But everything’s as it should be;
Moments that you are not you,
You might just be a bit of me
Or I might be a bit of you.
I really do not know:
But I see longing everywhere,
Yes, everywhere I go.
Now, no one knows the way back home,
But few left leave their homes at all;
In the silence and the gloom
They sit, just past the narrow hall
That leads to where they really are.
I can but vaguely see:
Still, you’ll find longing everywhere,
Wherever you might be.
He’s tired of wrestling with his heart,
She’s stretched down to a wire;
The branches dark and bare upon
The black tree of desire
That people stare at every day.
They move, they stop, they go:
But they find longing everywhere,
As I’m sure that you know —
Yes, we find longing everywhere,
For that is how
We grow
