West-Running Brook

'Fred, where is north?'
 'North? North is there, my love.
 The brook runs west.'
 'West-running Brook then call it.'
 (West-Running Brook men call it to this day.)
 'What does it think k's doing running west
 When all the other country brooks flow east
 To reach the ocean? It must be the brook
 Can trust itself to go by contraries
 The way I can with you -- and you with me --
 Because we're -- we're -- I don't know what we are.
 What are we?'
 'Young or new?'
 'We must be something.
 We've said we two. Let's change that to we three.
 As you and I are married to each other,
 We'll both be married to the brook. We'll build
 Our bridge across it, and the bridge shall be
 Our arm thrown over it asleep beside it.
 Look, look, it's waving to us with a wave
 To let us know it hears me.'
 ' 'Why, my dear,
 That wave's been standing off this jut of shore --'
 (The black stream, catching a sunken rock,
 Flung backward on itself in one white wave,
 And the white water rode the black forever,
 Not gaining but not losing, like a bird
 White feathers from the struggle of whose breast
 Flecked the dark stream and flecked the darker pool
 Below the point, and were at last driven wrinkled
 In a white scarf against the far shore alders.)
 'That wave's been standing off this jut of shore
 Ever since rivers, I was going to say,'
 Were made in heaven. It wasn't waved to us.'
 'It wasn't, yet it was. If not to you
 It was to me -- in an annunciation.'
 'Oh, if you take it off to lady-land,
 As't were the country of the Amazons
 We men must see you to the confines of
 And leave you there, ourselves forbid to enter,-
 It is your brook! I have no more to say.'
 'Yes, you have, too. Go on. You thought of something.'
 'Speaking of contraries, see how the brook
 In that white wave runs counter to itself.
 It is from that in water we were from
 Long, long before we were from any creature.
 Here we, in our impatience of the steps,
 Get back to the beginning of beginnings,
 The stream of everything that runs away.
 Some say existence like a Pirouot
 And Pirouette, forever in one place,
 Stands still and dances, but it runs away,
 It seriously, sadly, runs away
 To fill the abyss' void with emptiness.
 It flows beside us in this water brook,
 But it flows over us. It flows between us
 To separate us for a panic moment.
 It flows between us, over us, and with us.
 And it is time, strength, tone, light, life and love-
 And even substance lapsing unsubstantial;
 The universal cataract of death
 That spends to nothingness -- and unresisted,
 Save by some strange resistance in itself,
 Not just a swerving, but a throwing back,
 As if regret were in it and were sacred.
 It has this throwing backward on itself
 So that the fall of most of it is always
 Raising a little, sending up a little.
 Our life runs down in sending up the clock.
 The brook runs down in sending up our life.
 The sun runs down in sending up the brook.
 And there is something sending up the sun.
 It is this backward motion toward the source,
 Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in,
 The tribute of the current to the source.
 It is from this in nature we are from.
 It is most us.'
 'To-day will be the day... You said so.'
 'No, to-day will be the day
 You said the brook was called West-running Brook.'
 'To-day will be the day of what we both said.'