The Return
A vision missed, yet he had brought some remnants, Shreds of old dream for you to conjure with, A winter unwrapped from him and he giving .Himself, explorer, to you from the snow.
Yet he would never grow to truth form this As if the travelled pole were nothing to him, Nothing the all-day, all-night glare of sun And men resuming something in the waste, Something made rife and to be grasped in treeless, Flowerless country. All your south evades
Some issue he explores : the light's not bold In sky stretched out as far as it will go (And seeming to enlarge horizons too) As in the north, but southern sun drifts round The flowers and separates, dividing life From life, nothing in common men with
plants.
The altered man returning brings a vestige Of snow, a hint of how the Arctic looked However, he transfigures his own face To speak of love for you. Receive him then Not to that narrow place within your
ELIZABETH JENNINGS
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