In the late sunlight I walked alone,
As an outsider, watched the whole:

The warm flowing in the golden light,
Up there, the clouds of innocent white,
The dance of shadows beneath the rustling leaves,
And that thing among the leaning trees;
I heard the hiss of the weighty wind,
Sound of the changes it might bring,
Blind buzzing of the whimsical wheat,
And that thing folding a wheel in the heat;
I felt the nature had touched my soul,
Every futile worry of the world fall,
The sweet summer as a kiss of honey,
And like that thing had moved inside me.
Slowly the day turned into night,
The stars were held by the moon tight,
The warm was changed by the cold,
And that thing was frozen and old.
I knew that thing, down from my heart,
All of it, the bright side and the dark;
The minutes became hours, then years,
A century had been spent with no fears;
The flowers had bloomed and dried,
Children had born, grown and died -
But that wheel had never, never stopped.

I was still standing there,
in that timeless space,
In my captive memory -
the past’s powerful place.