Departure in the Dark

        Departure in the Dark

 Nothing so sharply reminds a man he is mortal
 As leaving a place
 In a winter morning's dark, the air on his face
 Unkind as the touch of sweating metal:
 Simple goodbyes to children or friends become
 A felon's numb
 Farewell, and love that was a warm, a meeting place–
 Love is the suicide's grave under the nettles.

 Gloomed and clemmed as if by an imminent ice-age
 Lies the dear world
 Of your street-strolling, field-faring. The senses, curled
 At the dead end of a shrinking passage,
 Care not if close the inveterate hunters creep,
 And memories sleep
 Like mammoths in lost caves. Drear, extinct is the world,
 And has no voice for consolation or presage.

 There is always something at such times of the passover,
 When the dazed heart
 Beats for it knows not what, whether you part
 From home or prison, acquaintance or lover–
 Something wrong with the time-table, something unreal
 In the scrambled meal
 And the bag ready packed by the door, as though the heart
 Has gone ahead, or is staying here forever.

 No doubt for the Israelites that early morning
 It was hard to be sure
 If home were prison or prison home: the desire
 Going forth meets the desire returning.
 This land, that had cut their pride down to the bone
 Was now their own
 By ancient deeds of sorrow. Beyond, there was nothing sure
 But a desert of freedom to quench their fugitive yearnings.

 At this blind hour the heart is informed of nature's
 Ruling that man
 Should be nowhere a more tenacious settler than
 Among wry thorns and ruins, yet nurture
 A seed of discontent in his ripest ease.
 There's a kind of release
 And a kind of torment in every goodbye for every man–
 And will be, even to the last of his dark departures.


 Cecil Day Lewis