At the end of my suffering
there was a door.
Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.
Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff Earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds starting in low shrubs.
You do not remember
passage from the other world.
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue —
shadows on azure sea water.
Louise Glück
Wild Iris (1992)
THE POETRY PLACE 