© Steve King
All rights reserved
I
thought any pathway back
should
brook no mystery.
Yet
the way to origins—
what
I was, and what I said and did,
and
what I thought,
and
how I knew to do,
and
who it was that struck those marks
all
over the old sheets—
there
is now only this:
I
recall how each long-finished line
did onetime beckon
from
its place of puzzlement,
while
I mused and sought to see a way
to bring
reluctant shadows full alive,
apart
from all the other words,
shining
within their own delights,
animate,
robust to heart and mind,
and
sprung of an enchanting genesis.
Waiting
for each old world to unfold,
it
is the dawning sense
of the
obvious that surprises me so:
at every turn an old familiar
given
just another form,
while
only in some strictest sense
is
anything reborn.
Each
old stroke dislodges to a partial light
a rude and rediscovered gem,
the
best, largely obscure:
where
once I knew each crowning glow,
now
only sometimes do these yield
reflection
of my will.
I must
see each book finally closed,
each
chapter sealed—
all the times consigned to right repose.
And
then may new familiars rise instead,
so
I may break off dreaming on the dead.
