I have gone into the waste lonely places
By daily dying, I have come to be.
A lively understandable spirit Once entertained you. It will come again. Be still. Wait.
Love begets love. This torment is my joy.
I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing, In my veins, in my bones I feel it,- The small water seeping upward, The tight grains parting at last. When sprouts break out, Slippery as fish, I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.
So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.