Ecstasy

Stars, turn from your courses,

Stars, stars, I want you,

Spill into my hands.

I have found a new loneliness,

A new strong loneliness,

That no one understands.

I know a new joy, stars,

A joy of the still peak,

The wonder of airs knife-sharp;

Stars, I have learned to know them,

I have learned the tongue they speak.

Stars, I can understand them,

All the words they say,

All the subtle things.

They teach me exaltation,

A new intoxication

Fine drawn as the music of harp-strings.

Alone … alone … alone …

Stars, I can hear my skin breathe,

Hear my blood beat.

How can flesh be so light,

Feet walk and touch nothing,

Thought become so fleet?

Time is a rhymeless poem

Without any end Written in space,

Here at the world’s summit

Where life-giving winds

Sharply whip one’s face.

Life is the one reality,

Life intensely realized,

Life wildly felt;

Death is an ungrasped dream,

A vague monstrous fable,

A puzzle still unspelt.

Alone … alone … alone …

No other thing that breathes

In this keen place.

O my new joy,

Joy of singing summits,

Of endless, vibrant space!

Stars, stars, stoop down,

Stars, turn from your courses,

Spill into my hands!

Stars, you are my kindred:

I am strong with a new loneliness

That no one understands.