Waterlily Fire, 3. Journey Changes

Muriel Rukeyser, 1962

Many of us Each in his own life waiting
Waiting to move Beginning to move Walking
And early on the road of the hill of the world
Come to my landscapes emerging on the grass

The stages of the theatre of the journey

I see the time of willingness between plays
Waiting and walking and the play of the body
Silver body with its bosses and places
One by one touched awakened into into

Touched and turned one by one into flame

The theatre of the advancing goddess Blossoming
Smiles as she stands intensely being in stillness
Slowness in her blue dress advancing standing I go
And far across a field over the jewel grass

The play of the family stroke by stroke acted out

Gestures of deep acknowledging on the journey stages
Of the playings the play of the goddess and the god
A supple god of searching and reaching
Who weaves his strength Who dances her more alive

The theatre of all animals, my snakes, my great horses

Always the journey long patient many haltings
Many waitings for choice and again easy breathing
When the decision to go on is made
Along the long slopes of choice and again the world
The play of poetry approaching in its solving

Solvings of relations in poems and silences
For we were born to express born for a journey
Caves, theatres, the companioned solitary way
And then I came to the place of mournful labor

A turn in the road and the long sight from the cliff

Over the scene of the land dug away to nothing and many
Seen to a stripped horizon carrying barrows of earth
A hod of earth taken and emptied and thrown away
Repeated farther than sight. The voice saying slowly

But it is hell. I heard my own voice in the words
Or it could be a foundation And after the words
My chance came. To enter. The theatres of the world.