t...i...m...e • (the calendars)

IN A DARK TIME

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood —
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks — is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds,
a ragged moon,
And in broad day
the midnight come again!
A man goes far
to find out what he is —
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light,
and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill.
Which I is I?
A fallen man,
I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

Theodore Roethke

Theodore Roethke, “In a Dark Time” from Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. Copyright © 1963

1813
.久しぶりの顔もって来る燕哉
hisashiburi no kao motte kuru tsubame kana

arriving with faces that say
it's been a long time...
swallows

1821
.世が直る直るとむしもをどり哉
yo ga naoru naoru to mushi mo odori kana

"The world is better!
better!"
the insect dances too

1825
.鳴な虫直る時には世が直る
naku na mushi naoru toki ni wa yo ga naoru

don't sing, insects!
the world will get better
in its own time

1802
.よひ闇の一本榎なくかはづ
yoiyami no ippon enoki naku kawazu

darkening dusk--
in one nettle tree
singing frogs

Issa