the wild iris

.

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