EPITHALAMION

How far returning, that all strangeness seems
near and familiar as a mother; this creation,
perfecting woman, like the child's warm stillness;
a memory of confidence.  Our loves are wombs.
Not the strange touch and unknown arcs of passion,
lighting and yielding of the body, break this fulness.

And not the wide anxiety, nor pain
suddenly shouting like a joy, and being joy:
it is the body that forgets the body
- tenderness somewhere in the dark and love like rain:
oh earth glad earth beneath him, agony
of being happiness, and other, and held steady.

New and impossible again; as if
a boy's thought lived, discovery again, and wonder:
terror of power forgiven, and room for pity,
love being harbour, being cloak or hand or knife.
Oh carrying of comfort, hurt of this tender
moulding of One to Other, violence of beauty.

All the flesh crying crying heart transfigured
now, like the splendid bitter lion of the sea:
the power that loses us: we are its breathing,
homeless and kindless as the wind, and blood-beleaguered.
She in the fierce away I have made be,
myself, her huge intensity of one and nothing.

World like a mist a ghost returning, room
slowly about us rising through our webs of night,
burden again of knowing, give us peace.
Each now for ever is the other's coming-home,
a shining archway quivering to that
infinity which swept us with its terrible eyes.