The Task

from The Double Dream of Spring (1970)

        They are preparing to begin again:
	Problems, new pennant up the flagpole
	In a predicated romance.
	 
        About the time the sun begins to cut laterally across
	The western hemisphere with its shadows, its carnival echoes,
	The fugitive lands crowd under separate names.
	It is the blankness that follows gaiety, and Everyman must depart
	Out there into stranded night, for his destiny
	Is to return unfruitful out of the lightness
	That passing time evokes.  It was only
	Cloud-castles, adept to seize the past
	And possess it, through hurting.  And the way is clear
	Now for linear acting into that time
	In whose corrosive mass he first discovered how to breathe.
	 
        Just look at the filth you’ve made,
	See what you’ve done.
	Yet if these are regrets they stir only lightly
	The children playing after supper,
	Promise of the pillow and so much in the night to come.
	I play to stay here a little while
	For these are moments only, moments of insight,
	And there are reaches to be attained,
	A last level of anxiety that melts
	In becoming, like miles under the pilgrim’s feet.