Toward what island-home am I moving

Toward what island-home am I moving,

not wanting to marry, not wanting

too much of that emptiness at evening,

as when I walked through a field at dusk

and felt wide in the night.

And it was again the evening that drew me

back to the field where I was most alone,

compassed by stems and ruts,

no light of the fixed stars, no flashing in the eyes,

only heather pared by dry air, shedding

a small feathered radiance when I looked away,

an expanse whose deep sleep seemed an unending

warren I had been given, to carry out such tasks—

that I might find nothing dead.  

And it was again the evening that drew me

back to the field where I could sense no boundary—

the smell of dry earth, cool arch of my neck, the darkness

entirely within myself.  

And when I shut my eyes there was no one.

Only weeds in drifts of stillness, only

stalks and gliding sky.

Come, black anchor, let us not be harmed.

The deer leafing in the dark.

The old man at the table, unable to remember.

The children whose hunger is just hunger,

and never desire.