UK Wandering Network (UKWN)
 

Photo by Jane Stokes

Photo by Jane Stokes

Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

by Mark Strand
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/keeping-things-whole/

The Wanderer

Tell me, nymph from Knowledge's wells,
are there things to show to me here?
Dizziness seizes me, laughter and terror.
The air has paths that bear!

Alone with you, you eagle-eyed one,
I wander far, so far ascend,
frozen roads, chiming roads
without a goal or end.

All the holy days of love
their evening and aloneness know.
Faithful wait in the evening light
you that search and know.

All that I meet I will leave again.
Nymph, you heal burning woe.
Chiming roads, chiming roads
happy with you I will go.

Follow me hence through life's days,
teach me to say at darkness' door:
'Nothing I knew, little know I -
yet it is more than before!'

Karen Boye Hidden Lands (1924) translated by David McDuff