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 a 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