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.