Journey round the garden 3

Rocket

When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone (Galway Kinnell)

3

When one has lived a long time alone,
among regrets so immense the past occupies
nearly all the room there is in consciousness,
one notices in the snake's eyes, which see behind
without giving less attention to what's ahead,
the opaque, milky-blue cloudiness that comes
when the snake is about to throw its skin
and become new - meanwhile continuing,
of course, to grow old - the same bleu passe
that bleaches the corneas of the blue-eyed
when they lie back at the end and look for heaven,
a fading one supsects means they will never find it,
when one has lived a long time alone.