<i>Come to me</i> said the world. I was standing in my wool coat at a kind of bright portal — I can finally say <i>long ago</i>; it gives me consider… - Louise Glück

death cannot harm me
more than you have harmed me,
my beloved life.

Dear friend,
dear trembling partner, what
surprises you most in what you feel,
earth's radiance or your own delight?
For me, always
the delight is the surprise.

I see, he said, that you no longer
wish to resume your former life,
to move, that is, in a straight line as time
suggests we do, but rather (here he gestured toward the lake)
in a circle which aspires to
the stillness at the heart of things,
though I prefer to think it also resembles a clock.

Snowdrops

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn’t expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring — afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.