Sooner or later you will have to do it.

Go in.  Open 

the heavy door of childhood

and listen

to the same wind in the linens; listen

as it brings you to the bed again,

as you lie down

in the ruins of the new moon,

the new moon 

with its bitter taste

of ashes, the tattered moon

with its silks 

that bid you stay.

This

is the same moon, the moon of youth,

like all the heavy halters of a breaker.

This is the place

where the fear came, where it broke your life

like common bread 

in darkness,

where it opened you

to the new moon in its changes.  This 

is where you gave your life

away.

Listen.  Be still

and listen.  Unlasting, at last,

is what you have now—

—And when you lie down

in the ruins

of this new moon, when you rise up

and stand again

in tatters, 

look back

at the old ghosts 

in the coldness,

the darkened house

of shadows as you close it,

as you open

to the spring wind

in the grasses, the cold road

you will walk, now, to its ending—

through the new 

moon, through its ruins, through its music,

and as far as its changes will take you

toward the great

and the changed place 

of the saved ones

where to live this life and sing it are the same.