From: Time In The Rock
XXIV
If one voice, not another, must speak first,
out of the silence, the stillness, the preceding—
speaking clearly, speaking slowly, measuring calmly
the heavy syllables of doubt, or of despair—
speaking passionately, speaking bitterly, hunger or hope
ordering the words, that are like sounds of flame—:
if one speaks first, before that other or the third,
out of the silence bringing the dark message,
the grave and great acceptance of the rock,
the huge world, held in the huge hand of faith:
and if it says, I hold the world like this;
here in the light, amid these crumbling walls;
here in the half-light, the deceptive moment,
here in the darkness like a candle lifted—:
take it, relieve me of it, bear it away;
have it, now and forever, for your own;
this that was mine, this that my voice made mine,
this that my word has shaped for you—
if this voice speaks before us, speaks before
ourselves can speak, challenging thus the dark;
waking the sleeping watcher from his sleep,
altering the dreamer’s dream while still he dreams;
so that on waking—ah, what despair he knows!
to learn that while he slept the world was made—
made by that voice, and himself made no less,
and now inalterably curved forever—
yes, if to wake, to cease to dream, be this,
to face a self made ready while we slept,
shaped in the world’s shape by the single voice—
if thus we wake too late and find ourselves
already weeping, already upon the road
that climbs past shame and pain to crucifixion—
seeing at once, with eyes, just opened, the world,
vast, bright, and cruciform, on which so soon
ascending we must die—
and to look backward,
but know no turning back; to go forward,
even as we turn our faces to the past;
still gazing downward from the hill we climb,
searching the dark for that strange dream we had,
which the voice altered and broke—
ah, can it comfort us,
us helpless, us thus shaped by a word,
sleepwalking shadows in the voice-shaped world,
[...] Read more
poem by Conrad Potter Aiken
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