A Guatemalan woman was quoting May Sarton

Imagine a Yankee like me hearing a Guatemala woman quoting May Sarton on the streets of Granada, Nicaragua yesterday. Here I am falling in love again with the romantic rebellious poets of Central America, and then I hear a voice that is so like my own  (only in poetry). It was certainly a cool experience. I can relate to the poems of the oppressed, to the poems of the angry, to the poems of the romantic, but I can really relate to the poems of a woman who lived in New Hampshire and Maine. Through poetry we can all be everyone. I suspect that is true for all art.

I know myself less and less as I age. I know less and less what I want from life and what I have to give to life. When I was 21, I knew just about everything. This state I find myself in is not about self doubt or a crisis of confidence. This is something about having a wider view of the illusions that we dwell in. Somehow the paradox of my life getting a bit smaller and my viewpoint getting larger is creating this new space that is my life.

I think I am less complicated than I used to be. I suspect that I am a pretty simple soul. I don't think I am hung up with guilt, although there are somethings I don't plan on repeating. I remember history, but I don't wish I were living in it. I am happy to get out of bed in the morning and mostly glad for what each day brings. I can sit still longer than I ever have, but I still struggle with a pretty big dose of impatience. Was there something about that in my last two New Years resolutions? I have some vague recollection about that. I look forward to seeing my kids and grand kids in San Francisco at Easter. I am eating life in smaller pieces now. At the same time I feel ready to big leap. I will be happy to see where I go next.

Here is a poem by May Sarton for you to enjoy. I hope.

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
As thought shapes the shaper
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!