Galway Kinnell, "Two Set Out on a Journey"

[lunar-endeavor.livejournal.com]

This one's always been near and dear to me.

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We sit side by side,
brother and sister, and read
the book of what will be, while the wind
blows the pages over---
desolate odd, desolate even,
and otherwise. When it falls open
to our own story, the happy beginning,
the ending happy or not we don't know,
the ten thousand acts which encumber
and engross the days between,
we will read every page of it,
for if the ancestors have pressed
a love-flower for us, it will lie
between pages of the slow going,
where only those who adore the story
can find it. When it is time
to close the book and set out,
we will take the laughter of childhood
as far as we can into the days to come,
until we can hear, in the distance,
another laughter sounding back
from the earth where our next bodies
will have risen and will be laughing
at all that seemed deadly serious once,
offering to us new wayfarers
the light heart we started with,
now made of time and sorrow.