'The power and danger of words'

 

“The more articulate one is, the more dangerous words become.” – May Sarton

 

Born in Belgium on this date in 1912, Sarton has been called “a poet's poet.”   Over a 70-year career, began when she was a teen, she authored 17 books of poetry, 19 novels, 15 nonfiction works, 2 children's books, and several screenplays, writing right up to her death in 1995 at her U.S. home in New England (her family emigrated to the U.S. in 1914 and she grew up in Boston). 

 

 Her award-winning poem “Now I Become Myself” was written on her birthday in 1947 – also the day on which I was born.  It was an easy selection for my choice as this week’s Saturday’s Poem.  Here is Sarton's,

 

                            Now I Become Myself

                             Now I become myself. It's taken
                             Time, many years and places;
                             I have been dissolved and shaken,
                             Worn other people's faces,
                             Run madly, as if Time were there,
                             Terribly old, crying a warning,
                             'Hurry, you will be dead before-'
                             (What? Before you reach the morning?
                             Or the end of the poem is clear?
                             Or love safe in the walled city?)

                           Now to stand still, to be here,
                           Feel my own weight and density!
                           The black shadow on the paper
                           Is my hand; the shadow of a word
                           Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
                           All fuses now, falls into place
                           From wish to action, word to silence,
                           My work, my love, my time, my face
                           Gathered into one intense
                           Gesture of growing like a plant.
                           As slowly as the ripening fruit
                           Fertile, detached, and always spent,
                           Falls but does not exhaust the root,
                           So all the poem is, can give,
                           Grows in me to become the song,
                           Made so and rooted by love.
                           Now there is time and Time is young.

                            O, in this single hour I live
                            All of myself and do not move.
                            I, the pursued, who madly ran,
                            Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!