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Overview
Coming into Eighty presents a poet’s look at age. Herein, Sarton gives readers a glimpse into her quotidian tasks, her memories, her losses, and her triumphs. The volume explores topics ranging from the war in Iraq to the struggle of taking a cat to the vet. Dark and immediate, this work catalogues both the tedium and the splendor of life with equal wit and beauty. Winner of the Levinson Prize.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781480474314 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 03/25/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 70 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
An accomplished memoirist, Sarton came out as a lesbian in her 1965 book Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing. Her memoir Journal of a Solitude (1973) was an account of her experiences as a female artist. Sarton spent her later years in York, Maine, living and writing by the sea. In her memoir Endgame: A Journal of the Seventy-Ninth Year (1992), she shares her own personal thoughts on getting older. Her final poetry collection, Coming into Eighty, was published in 1994. Sarton died on July 16, 1995, in York, Maine.
May Sarton (1912–1995) was born on May 3 in Wondelgem, Belgium, and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her first volume of poetry, Encounters in April, was published in 1937 and her first novel, The Single Hound, in 1938. Her novels A Shower of Summer Days, The Birth of a Grandfather, and Faithful Are the Wounds, as well as her poetry collection In Time Like Air, all received nominations for the National Book Award.
An accomplished memoirist, Sarton came out as a lesbian in her 1965 book Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing. Her memoir Journal of a Solitude (1973) was an account of her experiences as a female artist. Sarton spent her later years in York, Maine, living and writing by the sea. In her last memoir, Endgame: A Journal of the Seventy-Ninth Year (1992), she shares her own personal thoughts on getting older. Her final poetry collection, Coming into Eighty, was published in 1994. Sarton died on July 16, 1995, in York, Maine.
Read an Excerpt
Coming Into Eighty
Poems
By May Sarton
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1994 May SartonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4804-7431-4
CHAPTER 1
COMING INTO EIGHTY
Coming into eighty
I slow my ship down
For a safe landing.
It has been battered,
One sail torn, the rudder
Sometimes wobbly.
We are hardly a glorious sight.
It has been a long voyage
Through time, travail and triumph,
Eighty years
Of learning what to be
And how to become it.
One day the ship will decompose
and then what will become of me?
Only a breath
Gone into nothingness
Alone
Or a spirit of air and fire
Set free?
Who knows?
Greet us at landfall
The old ship and me,
But we can't stay anchored.
Soon we must set sail
On the last mysterious voyage
Everybody takes
Toward death.
Without my ship there,
Wish me well.
RENASCENCE
For two years
The great cat,
Imagination,
Slept on.
Then suddenly
The other day
What had lain dormant
Woke
To a shower,
A proliferation
Of images.
My Himalayan cat
Sits on the terrace wall
Back to the sea
His blue eyes wide open
Alive to every stir of a leaf
Every wing in the air
And I recognize him
As a mage.
After long silence
An old poet
Singing again,
I am a mage myself
Joy leaps to my throat.
Glory be to God!
I WANTED POEMS TO COME
I wanted poems to come
Running and leaping —
All they did was dream
While I was sleeping.
In the dreams I could leap
and run
Feeling no pain
It was healing and resolution
I was given my life again.
THE O'S OF NOVEMBER
I remember
The cold
And the somber
O's of November
No birdsong in the marsh
Not even at dawn
But only the crows
Loud and harsh.
Like the trees we are bare
And the chill on the air
Speaks of death.
They are shooting the deer.
In this time in this place
Of the dying body
It is dark now at four
We are pulled down to earth.
But the O's of November
In all times and all places
Bring the ancient rite,
Bring the snows of December.
In all the religions
All over the earth
The candles are lit
For rebirth.
DECEMBER MOON
Before going to bed
After a fall of snow
I look out on the field
Shining there in the moonlight
So calm, untouched and white
Snow silence fills my head
After I leave the window.
Hours later near dawn
When I look down again
The whole landscape has changed
The perfect surface gone
Criss-crossed and written on
Where the wild creatures ranged
While the moon rose and shone.
Why did my dog not bark?
Why did I hear no sound
There on the snow-locked ground
In the tumultuous dark?
How much can come, how much can go
When the December moon is bright,
What worlds of play we'll never know
Sleeping away the cold white night
After a fall of snow.
AS FRESH, AS ALWAYS NEW
As fresh, as always new
As it has always been
The first fall of snow
Falls soft as in a dream
To transform the sad brown
Of late November
Into a lavish scene,
The ermine of December.
And every year we wonder,
Forlorn as we are,
What sudden clap of thunder
Or brilliance of a star
Could stop us where we are,
Could stir the roots to sense
Out of the dark once more
Rebirth of innocence.
Will it be born again,
Fresh as the first snowfall,
That love without a stain?
Who knows, who can tell?
Yet for an interval
Always the Christmas grace,
That gift beyond our will,
Makes earth a holy place.
SMALL JOYS
NEW YEAR 1990
What memory keeps fresh, frames unspoken,
I catch for you, innumerable friends.
When so much else has been destroyed or broken
These joys remain intact as the year ends,
A year of earth-grief and of bitter news,
The starving children and the burning trees,
Otters coated in oil and dolphins drowned.
Small joys keep life alive. I give you these.
They will not die, you know. They stay around.
When the long winter lingered on
And all the color stayed an ugly brown,
Suddenly snowdrops had pushed their way through
And their sharp whiteness made all new.
Early in February owls began to woo,
Their language gentle, calling, "Who? Who? Who?"
And I was lit up when an awesome bird
In the harsh cold spoke such a tender word.
The finches changed their suits early this year
From olive to bright gold, and there they were
Burbling as always, their busy flight a whir
Of yellow weaving through static air.
The daffodils in April thronged the grass
And all along the wood's edge, fabulous
To show the thousand faces of a nation,
Expected, still beyond all expectation.
Later in June, alive with silent fire,
The fireflies pulsed their firefly desire
And from the terrace I could watch the dance,
Follow their bliss. It happened only once.
Full summer brought nasturtiums in profusion
I picked and bent to drink the sweet confusion,
Yellow and orange, the fresh scent. I could
Keep summer in a bowl for days, and did.
One autumn night my cat ran to my call
And leapt five feet over the terrace wall.
A second, weightless, he flowed and did not fall
That silver splendor, princely and casual.
And last I give you murmur of waves breaking,
The sound of sleep that is a kind of waking
As the tide rises from the distant ocean
And all is still and yet all in motion.
The small joys last and even outlast earthquake.
I give you these for love—and for hope's sake.
A THOUGHT
The steamroller
That crushes a butterfly
In its path has not won
Anything
Only destroyed something.
Brute power
Is not superior
To a flower.
FRIENDSHIP AND ILLNESS
Through the silences,
The long empty days
You have sat beside me
Watching the finches feed,
The tremor in the leaves.
You have not left my mind.
Friendship supplied the root—
It was planted years ago—
To bring me flowers and seed
Through the long drought.
Far-flung as you are
You have seemed to sit beside me.
You have not left my mind.
Will you come in the new year?
To share the wind in the leaves
And the finches lacing the air
To savor the silence with me?
It's been a long time.
BEST FRIEND
Like two halves of an almond
We were inseparable
As children,
Made up a language
Called Oyghee
Which gave us
Our own space
And shut out the world.
Were lords
Of a summer camp
Where we entered a contest,
Decorated our canoe
As a Viking ship,
Shield-sided,
But failed to win
Because we laughed so much
The canoe capsized.
Grown up, we rarely met,
Our lives were so different.
When we did
Oyghee was spoken at once.
"How is theuta weonig?"
Hard times, illness,
Near despair,
They all poured out.
Your vision of life
Was original.
Never once did I hear you
Utter the expected
Or the usual.
That fresh look
At everything
From the mundane
To the excruciatingly private
Cost a great deal.
You could not rest in the ordinary,
The evasive
Or less than your own
Authentic truth.
Were you a genius
Who did not discover her talent?
Without writing letters
We kept in touch.
I knew I would call
If you were dying.
"Is that one dying?
This one will come."
We would talk Oyghee
One last time.
But no one told me,
And now there is no ending,
But wherever I am, you are.
THE TEACHER
I used to think
Pain was the great teacher
But after two years
Of trying to learn
Its lessons
I am hoping my teacher
Will go away
She bores me almost to death,
She is so repetitive.
The pain I meant
Is the pain of separation
The end of a love.
That lesson is never learned
And is never boring.
Only a kind of
Desolation
Like a crow cawing
In the depth of winter.
Memory is merciless.
RINSING THE EYE
There is a thin glass
Between me and everything I see.
The glass is pain.
How to slide it away,
Unblur my vision?
"We must rinse the eye,"
My old friend, the poet,
Used to say.
But that was in Belgium
Many years ago.
Raymond is dead
And I am in exile,
Old and ill.
My eye turns inward
To rest on three poplars
And a lost garden.
The delphinium is very blue.
The columbine, purple and white,
Trembles in the breeze
And there are tall yellow daisies.
"We must rinse the eye,"
The poet reminds me
While his wife calls out
To the children to hurry.
The garden must be watered
Before dark,
And we run for the pails.
Nothing is blurred now,
Everything is quite clear
In the poignant evening light.
An explosion of memory
Has rinsed my eye.
PALM
Veiling only a little
The bright awe of his gift,
An angel to the table
Brings fresh bread and smooth milk.
But the grave eyelids there
Gently summon to prayer,
The vision's inwardness:
—Calm, calm, be calm!
Learn the weight of the palm
Supporting its largesse.
Just as the tree is bent
Under its heavy fruit,
Just so is all assent,
Leaning on its own weight;
Lovely the slight vibration,
The threading in slow motion
As it divides the moment
And learns to arbitrate
Between earth's pulling weight
And the vast firmament.
Between the sun and shade,
Wise as a sibyl's sleep,
This judgment lightly made
Still rests upon the deep.
Patient, it never tires
Of farewells or desires,
But, centered, the palm stands.
Oh, tender noble one
Worthy to wait alone
For the gods' fertile hands.
The light gold is a murmur
Fingered by simple air
To weave a silken armor
For desert soul to wear,
Gives to the brittle wind
Shot through with shifting sand
A voice that's never done,
Is its own oracle,
A self-made miracle
When grief sings on alone.
And still itself unknowing
Between sand and the sky
While each day shines, is growing
And makes a little honey.
This sweetness of sensation
Is timeless in duration
Through days that hardly move,
Uncounted hours of presence
Secrete the living essence
And the full weight of love.
Sometimes severe endeavor
Yields only that despair
Of shadow and of languor
In spite of many a tear.
Yet do not then accuse
The tree of avarice,
Oh Gold, Authority!
Gravely the rising sap
And the eternal hope
Grow to maturity.
These seeming-empty hours,
When the whole world is gone
Send avid roots and powers
Down through the desert, down
Like myriad fine hairs
The fruitful darkness bears;
Working their way through sand
To the entrails of earth
Where sources come to birth
That the high peaks demand.
Patience, and patience,
Patience across the blue.
Each atom of your silence
Ripens the fruit in you.
The grave mercy is near,
A dove, a breath of air,
The gentlest feeling,
There where a woman leans
The light rain begins
And you are kneeling.
If now a people fall
Palm—irresistibly!
Powdered like dust to roll
With the stars in the sky!
You have not lost those hours
So lightly bear your powers
After the great outgoing;
As does the thinking one
Who spends his spirit on
The gifts of his own growing.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Coming Into Eighty by May Sarton. Copyright © 1994 May Sarton. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Publisher's Note,PREFACE,
Coming into Eighty,
Renascence,
I Wanted Poems to Come,
The O's of November,
December Moon,
As Fresh, As Always New,
Small Joys,
A Thought,
Friendship and Illness,
Best Friend,
The Teacher,
Rinsing the Eye,
Palm,
After the Long Enduring,
Elegy,
The Artist,
All Souls 1991,
The Absence of God,
The Use of Force,
The Scream,
Guilt,
Melancholy,
For My Mother,
Getting Dressed,
Friend or Enemy,
Wanting to Die,
The Tides,
Lunch in the Garden,
Obit,
A Fortune,
To Have What I Have,
Bliss,
Luxury,
The Ender, The Beginner,
A Handful of Thyme,
Birthday Present,
About the Author,