The Stone Garden

Ryoan-ji, fifteenth century

When the world is reduced

To clusters of rock

Strewn on bare and,

World becomes essence.

When tame sand is raked 

Into algebras

Of orderly lines

And orderly circles,

The wildness is framed -

Each rock is a magnet.

And each has been threaded

As if by haphazard

And grouped into five

Spaced constellations

The mind hovers here

On the brink of creation.

Energy flows

From the magical scene,

So changeless and changing

It is never exhausted.

In autumn a leaf falls

And makes a notation.

Sun shafting cloud

Touches one rock alive.

Spring shadows delve

Pools here and there.

A snow-thatch in winter

Makes other distinctions.

All things are suspended

In shifting light and shade -

All but the themes itself:

Fifteen rocks and sand

Weaving a silent fugue

down through the centuries,

So changeless and changing

It is never exhausted.

-May Sarton

The Muse as Medusa

I saw you once, Medusa; we were alone.

I looked you straight in the cold eye, cold.

I was not punished, was not turned to stone.

How to believe the legends I am told?

I came naked as any little fish,
Prepared to be hooked, gutted, caught;
But I saw you, Medusa, made my wish,
And when I left you I was clothed in thought…

Being allowed, perhaps, to swim my way
Through the great deep and on the rising tide,
Flashing wild streams, as free and rich as they,
Though you had power marshaled on you side.

The fish escaped to many a magic reef;
The fish explored many a dangerous sea–
The fish, Medusa, did not come to grief,
But swims still in fluid mystery.

Forget the image: your silence is my ocean,
And even now, it teems with life. You chose
To abdicate by total lack of motion,
But did it work, for nothing really froze?

It is all fluid still, that world of feeling
Where thoughts, those, silent, feed and rove;
And, fluid, it is also full of healing,
For love is healing, even rootless love.

I turned your face around! It was my face.

That frozen rage is what I must explore -

Oh, secret, self-enclosed and ravaged place!

That is the gift I thank Medusa for.

-May Sarton

Halfway to Silence

I was halfway to silence

Halfway to land's end

When I heard your voice.

Shall I take you with me?

Shall we go together

All the way to silence,

All the way to land's end?

Is there a choice?

-May Sarton