DOWN THE SOLEMN DAYS

Down the solemn days

Down the solemn days of all my wanderings,

through basking, golden afternoons

or echoing across the vaulted stillness

and in the vast, black rages of the night,

I have come home,

to look once more upon the dreams I left

and see that they are good.

And to look once more upon old faces,

now etched with painful lines of mouldering memories,

and see that they are good.

By this brave fire I am bidden to sit down

and given autumn’s jam on new-baked bread,

and never asked about the things that I have done

or about the strangeness of the worlds that I have seen.

Here in this once-familiarity,

I can, at last, discover who I am

and am content with what I know.