The Quest: James Wright
In pasture where the leaf and wood Were lorn of all delicious apple, And underfoot a long and supple Bough leaned down to dip in mud, I came before the dark to stare At a gray nest blown in a swirl, As in the arm of a dead girl Crippled and torn and laid out bare.
On a hill I came to a bare house A crept beside its bleary windows, But no one lived in those gray hollows, And rabbits ate the dying grass. I stood upright, and beat the door, Alone, indifferent, and aloof To pebbles rolling down the roof And dust the filmed the deadened air.
High and behind, where twilight chewed Severer planes of hills away, And the bonehouse of a rabbit lay Dissolving by the darkening road, I came, and rose to meet the sky, And reached my fingers to a nest Of stars laid upward in the west; They hung too high; my hands fell empty.
So, as you sleep, I seek your bed And lay my careful, quiet ear Among the nestings of your hair, Against your tenuous, fragile head, And hear the birds beneath your eyes Stirring for birth, and know the world Immeasurably alive and good, Though bare as rifted paradise.