A Robert Duncan Poem

Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow

as if it were a scene made-up by the mind, 

that is not mine, but is a made place, 

that is mine, it is so near to the heart, 

an eternal pasture folded in all thought 

so that there is a hall therein 

that is a made place, created by light 

wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall. 

Wherefrom fall all architectures I am 

I say are likenesses of the First Beloved 

whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady. 

She it is Queen Under The Hill 

whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words 

that is a field folded. 

It is only a dream of the grass blowing 

east against the source of the sun 

in an hour before the sun’s going down 

whose secret we see in a children’s game 

of ring a round of roses told. 

Often I am permitted to return to a meadow 

as if it were a given property of the mind 

that certain bounds hold against chaos, 

that is a place of first permission, 

everlasting omen of what is.

(1960)