I

Life, be my pillow.
Forget, forget, forget
If I once asked for wandering
With never a thought of cold or wet.
Forget, forget, forget, forget
If I once asked for roads that fled
Before resisting tread.
Be nothing for my feet, life;
Be something under my head. . . .

II

I have loved,
And having loved, walk well.
I move not as I once, a lover, moved,
For now no stammered gladness of the mind
Corrupts my step's tonality; a bell,
Well-rung, is not more finally resigned.
With all that once was love I feed my feet.
Hear in my tread assimilated need;
Hear reaching, yielding, tempered to the beat
Of tethered rhythm; hear my sounds succeed
Each other, dying away
Into the day. . . .

III

Motion, motion;
Life is meaningless
Save in its motion.
I will move, blind; I will feel nothingness,
So that, itinerant, I may unwind
Meanings coiled in my feet. And though there be
Only the meaning of futility,
Yet, moving, I shall find
All that is ever found:
Motion, and echoed motion,
Sound. . . .

IV

Away,
Look away from me, away.
Consider how the pools of sun
Glisten in paleness on the street, and know
That I deplore with you what is begun
Only to serve the purpose of decay.
Consider well the daylight's watery glow
Shed by a sun involved in its more slow
Manner of dissolution, so that I,
Unheeded, may pass by. . . .

V

We live, we die,
Of course we die,
For we have lived and all
That pushes toward the sky
Must, after reaching, fall.
So if we live today
We may not live tomorrow,
Yet there's a better way
To die than to die of sorrow.
And whatever the dying be,
Companioned by winds that stalk
Beside us undyingly,
Let us walk, walk. . . .

VI

Hear me, I am guilty,
I am guilty, guilty, guilty,
My foot is heavy with the crime
Of going; I am guilty, guilty.
Hear me, and deplore what Time,
As its accomplice, makes me be,
For Time has made a tool of me,
And I am guilty, guilty, guilty.
Hear me, I am compelled to move,
To inflict my dream, to spend my love
And all the essences of life
Furthering strife. . . .

VII

Lost,
Lost, perhaps my way;
Perhaps the roads that crossed
Muddled my feet; perhaps a ray
Of light that I was meant to see
To make intelligible to me
The sense of something lost, is lost.
Lost, perhaps a wind-snatched word
Yet to be heard. . . .

VIII

Flame might follow my feet
Were I one motion nearer fire.
I am so nebulous with heat,
So much a shaping of desire,
Flame might follow, might follow my feet.
A dripping wing of flame might fuse
With my shadow but for the street
Cooling my shoes. . . .

IX

On and on;
I must go on and on
Through noon and night and dawn.
Only this is given me:
The going on and on and on
Through noon and dusk and night and dawn;
Never the interval to be
The contour of myself. With sound
Leaning like rain above the ground,
I must go on and on: a shape
Existent in escape. . . .

X

The tip of a fir,
And it is colored green,
Over a shiny roof is seen.
And who needs more, even if there were
Something more than the tip of a fir?
And who would think, even if they could,
Of roots and trunks that have stood, have stood
Through — but who would care how many springs —
Even if there were such things?
Over a roof
The feathery green
Tip of a fir
Is seen,
Seen. . . .

XI

Love me,
Love me; life am I,
And time is relentless lullaby.
Love me, touch me; my hands make
Your hands whole and keep you awake.
Touch me, lead me where high walls keep
Back the winds that might sing of sleep,
Yet never so far that slow desert sands
Swirl in our eyes and quiet our hands,
And never and never into the mist
Drowsy with sea. Hear the blood in my wrist
Evolving sound to chasten the tune
Time has sung to the moon. . . .

XII

Listen,
Listen, listen, listen.
Spend your hearing listening
To the utterance of my feet —
Utterance of my feet, my feet.
Deafen yourself on the sounds I fling
Bountifully over your dismal street,
And make them do for a quieter day
When I may not pass this way.
Listen, though you break your ear;
Listen, and you will hear
My feet, my feet, my feet. . . .

XIII

I must not sound.
Softness, be between me and the ground.
Caution, be my sandal, let me pass
Unchronicled like feet that fall on grass.
There has been much to chasten and to shame
Along the never-ending way I came;
There is so much of hush, of sleep in me
That once was wildness, I move quietly.
And yet for all my care I sound, I sound;
Like a panther through a tangled ground
I sound. . . .

XIV

Nothing,
Hear no more than nothing.
Hear no less, for that am I.
I am all that and yet no more
Than shadow on a wall, a high
Flurry of sand that swirls because
The wind has moved it from a shore
To fling it back to quietness.
No more, no more than this: the pause
Of many silences, no more,
And yet no less,
No less. . . .