Poetry Place : Poems : Life Light, and My Sudden Face

Light, and My Sudden Face

I am the man whose heart for
four days lost in a cave
beat when the water dripped:
I was found, and the water stopped,
never to start again.
Now even the cave is lost
where the lost, in order to hear,
held the whole breath of the earth.
In the night I strike a match,
one little glory, a flame
the world surrounds, a stutter
that leaps as the light goes out
and the trail to the cave begins:
impenetrably disguised as myself

I range the whole world in the dark
to hammer on doors with my heart.

William Stafford