The Other

by Ruth Fainlight

Whatever I find if I search will be wrong

I must wait; sternest trial of all, to sit

Passive, recpetive, and patient, empty

Of every demand and desire, until

That other, that being I never would have found

Though I spent my whole life in the quest, will step

From the shadows, appropach like a wild, awkward child.

And this will be the longest task: to attend,

To open myself.  To still my energy

Is harder that to use it any cause.

Yet surely she will only be revealed

By pushing against the grain of my nature

That always yearns for choice.  I feel it painful

And strong as a birth in which there is no pause.

I musthold myself back form every lure of action

To let her come closer, a wary smile on her face,

One arm lifted - to greet me or ward off attack

(I cannot decipher that uncertain gesture).

I must even control the pace of my breath

Until she has drawn her circle near enough

To capture the note of her faint reedy voice.

And then as in dreams, when a langauge unspoken

Since times before childhood is recalled

(When I was as timid as she, my forgotten sister -

Her presence my completion and reward),

I begin to understand, in fragments, the message

She waitied to long to deliver.  Loving her I shall learn

My own secret at last from the words of her song.