wild iris

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 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 darting in low shrubs.

 You who 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

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