West-Running Brook

West-Running Brook (1928)

‘Fred, where is north?’

‘North? North is there, my love.The brook runs west.’

‘West-running Brook then call it.’(West-Running Brook men call it to this day.)’What does it think k’s doing running westWhen all the other country brooks flow eastTo reach the ocean? It must be the brookCan trust itself to go by contrariesThe way I can with you — and you with me —Because we’re — we’re — I don’t know what we are.What are we?’

‘Young or new?’

‘We must be something.We’ve said we two. Let’s change that to we three.As you and I are married to each other,We’ll both be married to the brook. We’ll buildOur bridge across it, and the bridge shall beOur arm thrown over it asleep beside it.Look, look, it’s waving to us with a waveTo let us know it hears me.’

’ ‘Why, my dear,That wave’s been standing off this jut of shore —‘(The black stream, catching a sunken rock,Flung backward on itself in one white wave,And the white water rode the black forever,Not gaining but not losing, like a birdWhite feathers from the struggle of whose breastFlecked the dark stream and flecked the darker poolBelow the point, and were at last driven wrinkledIn a white scarf against the far shore alders.)’That wave’s been standing off this jut of shoreEver since rivers, I was going to say,‘Were made in heaven. It wasn’t waved to us.’

‘It wasn’t, yet it was. If not to youIt was to me — in an annunciation.’

‘Oh, if you take it off to lady-land,As’t were the country of the AmazonsWe men must see you to the confines ofAnd leave you there, ourselves forbid to enter,-It is your brook! I have no more to say.’

‘Yes, you have, too. Go on. You thought of something.’

‘Speaking of contraries, see how the brookIn that white wave runs counter to itself.It is from that in water we were fromLong, long before we were from any creature.Here we, in our impatience of the steps,Get back to the beginning of beginnings,The stream of everything that runs away.Some say existence like a PirouotAnd Pirouette, forever in one place,Stands still and dances, but it runs away,It seriously, sadly, runs awayTo fill the abyss’ void with emptiness.It flows beside us in this water brook,But it flows over us. It flows between usTo separate us for a panic moment.It flows between us, over us, and with us.And it is time, strength, tone, light, life and love-And even substance lapsing unsubstantial;The universal cataract of deathThat spends to nothingness — and unresisted,Save by some strange resistance in itself,Not just a swerving, but a throwing back,As if regret were in it and were sacred.It has this throwing backward on itselfSo that the fall of most of it is alwaysRaising a little, sending up a little.Our life runs down in sending up the clock.The brook runs down in sending up our life.The sun runs down in sending up the brook.And there is something sending up the sun.It is this backward motion toward the source,Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in,The tribute of the current to the source.It is from this in nature we are from.It is most us.’

‘To-day will be the day…You said so.’

‘No, to-day will be the dayYou said the brook was called West-running Brook.''To-day will be the day of what we both said.’

from West-Running Brook (1928)