Tasting the Earth
James Oppenheim
In a dark hour, tasting the Earth. /
As I lay on my couch in the muffled night, and the rain lashed at my window, / And my forsaken heart would give me no rest, no pause and no peace, / Though I turned my face far from the wailing of my bereavement… / Then I said: I will eat of this sorrow to its last shred, / I will take it unto me utterly, / I will see if I be not strong enough to contain it… / What do I fear? Discomfort? / How can it hurt me, this bitterness?
The miracle, then! / Turning toward it, and giving up to it, / I found it deeper than my own self… / O dark great mother-globe so close beneath me… / It was she with her inexhaustible grief, / Ages of blood-drenched jungles, and the smoking of craters, and the roar of tempests, / And moan of the forsaken seas, / It was she with the hills beginning / to walk in the shapes of the dark-hearted animals, / It was she risen, dashing away tears and praying to dumb skies, in the pomp-crumbling tragedy of man… / It was she, / container of all griefs, and the buried dust of broken hearts, / Cry of the christs and the lovers and the child-stripped mothers, / And ambition gone down to defeat, and the battle overborne, / And the dreams that have no waking…
My heart became her ancient heart: / On the food of the strong I fed, on dark strange life itself: / Wisdom-giving and sombre with the unremitting love of ages…
There was dank soil in my mouth, / And bitter sea on my lips, / In a dark hour, tasting the Earth.