May Sarton
*Behind the elderly Miss May is Thayer’s Portrait of May Sarton in the prime of her life, she who said, “We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.” In her prolific output poetry, journals and memoirs and prose she concentrated on themes of love, solitude, individual uniqueness, and self-knowledge. *See bio below the poems for more.
And oh yes–we’ve included a music vid that somehow seems to fit with a posting about May Sarton.
“A Prayer”
Help us to be the always hopeful
gardeners of the spirit
who know that without darkness
nothing comes to birth
as without light
nothing flowers.
—————-
“Now I Become Myself”
Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“Hurry, you will be dead before–”
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!
———————
“The Ten Commandments of the Gentelman Cat”
A Gentleman Cat has an immaculate shirt front and paws at all times.
A Gentleman Cat allows no constraint of his person, even loving constraint.
A Gentleman Cat does not mew except in extremity. He makes his wishes known and waits.
When addressed, A Gentleman Cat does not move a muscle. He looks as if he hadn’t heard.
When frightened, A Gentleman Cat looks bored.
A Gentleman Cat takes no interest in other people’s affairs, unless he is directly concerned.
A Gentleman Cat approaches food slowly, however hungry he may be, and decides at least three feet away whether it is Good, Fair, Passable, or Unworthy. If Unworthy, he pretends to scratch earth over it.
A Gentleman Cat gives thanks for a Worthy meal, by licking the plate so clean that a person might think it had been washed.
A Gentleman Cat is never hasty when choosing a housekeeper.
——————
“Love”
Fragile as a spider’s web
Hanging in space
Between tall grasses,
It is torn again and again.
A passing dog
Or simply the wind can do it.
Several times a day
I gather myself together
And spin it again.
Spiders are patient weavers.
They never give up.
And who knows
What keeps them at it?
Hunger, no doubt,
And hope.
———————-
*May Sarton, originally named Eleanor Marie Sarton, was born on May 3, 1912, in Wondelgem, Belgium. She and her family were forced to flee after the invasion by the Reichswehr in 1915, and the family settled in Boston, Massachusetts when Sarton was just four years old. For eight years she studied at the Shady Hill School in Cambridge, one of the country’s first progressive schools. By the time she graduated from high school, Sarton had decided to pursue a career as an actress, and at the age of seventeen she left home to join New York’s Civic Repertory Theater under Eva de Galienne. After the dissolution of the company and the failure of her own repertory theatre, the Associated Actors Theater, Sarton abandoned her dream of acting and turned her attention to writing.
In 1945, while on vacation in Sante Fe, Sarton met Judy Matlack, a professor of English at Simmons College, who became her lover and companion of thirteen years. The couple separated after the death of Sarton’s father, when Sarton moved to Nelson, New Hampshire. She later relocated to York, Maine, where she spent the last twenty years of her life.
During the early part of her career, Sarton enjoyed a good deal of critical acclaim, but later reviews were often harsh and even vicious. Sarton suffered from bouts of depression and self-doubt throughout her life, during which she questioned her talent and, on one occasion, almost gave up writing altogether. In the meantime, her audience continued to grow steadily, often by word of mouth, and Sarton continued to produce prolifically.
Sarton’s numerous collections of poetry include Coming Into Eighty (Norton, 1994), Collected Poems: 1930-1993 (1993), Halfway to Silence (1980), A Private Mythology (1966), The Lion and the Rose (1948), and Encounter in April (1937). She also published many autobiographical works and novels, notably Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing (1965), in which she revealed her homosexuality to the reading public. Over the course of her career, Sarton taught at several colleges and universities, including Harvard University, Bread Loaf, and Wellesley College. She died of breast cancer on July 16, 1995.
