So like, they seem the same,
The young shoots of the yellow iris sheathed leaf through leaf,
Lit green of glittering blades and shadows quivering on the sanded turf
Where limpet shells are strewn among the celandine
And driftwood from the surf.
So like they seem, almost I to my own memories had come home.

Never green leaf nor golden flower again;
Yet from the one immaculate root spring after spring
Upon the farthest Western shore the one Paradise,
Earth, sea and sky patterned with the one dream.
Traced on the wild that legendary land
More ancient than song or story or carved stone
My mother and her mother’s mother knew: the green ways,
Clear wells, stones of power, presences
In hoodies shape, high distant summits, hosts in the wind.
Signs in a language more heartfelt than holy book, or rune,
Each hill and hollow, each moving wing or shadow, means.
“Memory pours through the womb and lives in the air,”
And childhood with new eyes sees the for ever known:
The words by heart, we live the story as we will.

As I came over the hill to an unvisited shore
I seemed, though old, at the untold beginning of a familiar tale.