The Poetry of May Sarton Volume One

Letters from Maine, Inner Landscape, and Halfway to Silence

May Sarton

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781504057103
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Women in Poetry
• Index: Literature

Three celebrated volumes of verse from a feminist icon, poet, and author of the groundbreaking novel Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing. Letters from Maine: A rugged coastline provides a stark background for Sarton's images of a tragically brief love. With vulnerability and emotional depth, she explores the willingness to devote everything to a new love, as well as the despair at the memory of what is left over when it fades. Inner Landscape: This collection of May Sarton's poems displays her inimitable mix of stately verse and depth of feeling that lurks beneath every line, creating a tantalizing, magnetically charged distance between reader and poet. Halfway to Silence: After decades of writing flowing lyric verse, May Sarton's style turned to short, vibrant bursts of poetry. These condensed poems are rife with exuberant impressions of nature and of love, including two of her most acclaimed works, "Old Lovers at the Ballet" and "Of the Muse." Recognized as a true pioneer in lesbian literature, "Sarton's poems enter and illuminate every natural corner of our lives.... So strong in their faith and in their positive response to the human condition that they will outlast much of the fashionable, cynical poetry of our ear" (James Martin).

Part I

Letters from Maine

A Farewell

For a while I shall still be leaving,

Looking back at you as you slip away

Into the magic islands of the mind.

But for a while now all alive, believing

That in a single poignant hour

We did say all that we could ever say

In a great flowing out of radiant power.

It was like seeing and then going blind.

After a while we shall be cut in two

Between real islands where you live

And a far shore where I’ll no longer keep

The haunting image of your eyes, and you,

As pupils widen, widen to deep black

And I am able neither to love or grieve

Between fulfillment and heartbreak.

The time will come when I can go to sleep.

But for a while still, centered at last,

Contemplate a brief amazing union,

Then watch you leave and then let you go.

I must not go back to the murderous past

Nor force a passage through to some safe landing,

But float upon this moment of communion

Entranced, astonished by pure understanding—

Passionate love dissolved like summer snow.

Letters from Maine

1

Yes, I am home again, and alone.

Today wrote letters then took my dog

Out through the sad November woods.

The leaves have fallen while I was away,

The ground is golden while above

The maples are stripped of all color.

The ornamental cherries, red when I left,

Have paled now to translucent yellow.

Yes, I am home again, but home has changed.

And I within this cultivated space

That I have made my own, feel at a loss,

Disoriented. All the safe doors

Have come unlocked and too much light

Has flooded every room. Where can I go?

Not toward you three thousand miles away

Lost in your own rich life, given me

For an hour.

Read between the lines.

Then meet me in the silence if you can,

The long silence of winter when I shall

Make poems out of nothing, out of loss,

And at times hear your healing laughter.

2

November opens the sky. I look out

On an immense perimeter of ocean, blue

On every side, through the great oak

That screens it off all summer, see surf

Edging the rocks white on the other side.

The November muse who is with me now

Gives me wisdom and laughter, also clarity.

Aware of old age for the first time, accept

That I am old, and this sudden passion must be

A single sharp cry, torn out of me, as when

A few days ago on the ferry to Vancouver

I saw an eagle fly down in a great arc,

His fierce head flashing white among the gulls.

The ardor of seventy years seizes the moment

And must be held free, outside time,

Must learn to bear with the cleared space,

The futureless flame, and use it well,

Must rejoice in the still, quiet air

And this ineluctable solitude.

3

No letter from the muse. Time out.

Nevertheless I am floated on her presence,

Her strong reality, swung out above

Everything else that happens. In the mail

News of two brutal murders, and a wedding,

News of a poet friend in deep depression,

News from strangers reading my poems

And comforted, they say. I am suspended,

Wake before dawn to watch the sun come

Up from leaden waters every morning.

Turning the whole sky orange as it rises.

Slowly I learn the self who is emerging

As though newborn after a sterile summer.

Alone? Perhaps. But filled to the brim

With all that comes and goes, rejoicing.

Now there is someone to hold the kite

As it is tossed by the wind, keep it floating.

I manage better than I have for months to be

Open and balanced. The muse is there

To let the kite fly as high as it can,

Then slowly draw it in when there is peril.

So many times this summer it was broken,

Caught up in a tree or unable to fly.

The kite, marvelous muse, is in your hands.

4

There was your voice, astonishment,

Falling into the silence suddenly

As though there were no continent

Between its warmth and me at my desk,

Bringing joy to the roots, a giant gift

Across time. Five in the morning there.

Three thousand miles to cover instantly.

How is it done? How for that matter

Did it all happen when we met?

Time telescoped, years cast away,

And primal being finding this present

Where we were lifted beyond age,

Outside responsibilities, newfound,

In a way stranded, in a way home at last?

And in your tender laughter at me

Some total acceptance of all that I am,

Of all that is to be or not ever to be

As time goes on and we are lost

Or found in it over and over again.

5

From a distance the ocean looks calm,

Gray and unbroken stretching out to Spain,

But it is seamed with hidden tumult.

The long swells come in slowly from below

And build to immense fluid walls

Driven in by some deep pulse far away,

Ominous while they stand suspended

Then at the rock edge tumble, broken,

And send up shattered towers of white foam.

Muse, do you feel the tumult over there?

Or is it only steadfastness of mountains

Today that holds you still and silent?

While I, like one of the black ducks

Bobbing out there, must keep my balance,

Stay clear of the rocks as they do

Who know how to ride this tumult safely

And play its perils like a game.

6

“When a woman feels alone, when the room

Is full of daemons,” the Nootka tribe

Tells us, “The Old Woman will be there.”

She has come to me over three thousand miles

And what does she have to tell me, troubled

“by phantoms in the night?” Is she really here?

What is the saving word from so deep in the past,

From as deep as the ancient root of the redwood,

From as deep as the primal bed of the ocean,

From as deep as a woman’s heart sprung open

Again through a hard birth or a hard death?

Here under the shock of love, I am open

To you, Primal Spirit, one with rock and wave,

One with the survivors of flood and fire,

Who have rebuilt their homes a million times,

Who have lost their children and borne them again.

The words I hear are strength, laughter, endurance.

Old Woman I meet you deep inside myself.

There in the rootbed of fertility,

World without end, as the legend tells it.

Under the words you are my silence.

7

Who has spoken of the unicorn in old age?

She who was hunted for her strangeness,

Androgynous, fleeing her pursuers, hopeful

When she was young that she could bow her horn

Before the perfect innocence and purity

Of a virgin being. Who ha...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Publisher’s Note
• Letters from Maine
• Part I Letters from Maine
• Part II A Winter Garland
• Part III Letters to Myself
• Inner Landscape