National Poetry Day

Duality

I am the lover and the loved, 

The embrace I give encircles me;

And while I have scare breathed or moved

The tide has risen over me;

I am the body of the swimmer

And the soft engulfment of the sea.

I am the rock and the stretched hand

Clutching and resting, soon to press

Hot fingers in the yielding sand

And cool against the weeds' caress;

I am the wind that stirs the water

From its profound unconsciousness 

The shadow of the cliff falls chill

As the sun rolls towards the sea;

Mine is the shiver through the hill

As shade takes flower and blade and tree;

And with the wind's long sigh at evening

I voyage through immensity.

No narrowed bounds of skin encase

The body's leaping senses - far

They range beyond the pulses' race;

A touch may fire the farthest star,

And the small roof of human shelter

Cover all worlds that are.

Mary Stella Edwards, 1947. Taken from A Truce With Time