Now I become myself. It's taken <br />Time, many years and places; <br />I have been dissolved and shaken, <br />Worn other people's faces, <br />Run madly, as if Time were there, <br />Terribly old, crying a warning, <br />'Hurry, you will be dead before-' <br />(What? Before you reach the morning? <br />Or the end of the poem is clear? <br />Or love safe in the walled city?) <br />Now to stand still, to be here, <br />Feel my own weight and density! <br />The black shadow on the paper <br />Is my hand; the shadow of a word <br />As thought shapes the shaper <br />Falls heavy on the page, is heard. <br />All fuses now, falls into place <br />From wish to action, word to silence, <br />My work, my love, my time, my face <br />Gathered into one intense <br />Gesture of growing like a plant. <br />As slowly as the ripening fruit <br />Fertile, detached, and always spent, <br />Falls but does not exhaust the root, <br />So all the poem is, can give, <br />Grows in me to become the song, <br />Made so and rooted by love. <br />Now there is time and Time is young. <br />O, in this single hour I live <br />All of myself and do not move. <br />I, the pursued, who madly ran, <br />Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!<br /><br />May Sarton<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/now-i-become-myself/
