Forwarding the speed of sun so days and nights pass flashing by,
I sit beside my choicest window waiting for the time to die.

As years come in and years move on the arc of sun swings north to south
And bones grow harder, sighs grow longer, tighter sets the smiling mouth.

Why not get up, why not work, and go forth in some golden quest?
Why not aid gigantic systems finding out which path is best?

I won’t go, won’t leave my window, love to watch the world from here;
Even though the wind is sprightly, stakes are high if I go there.

Sky and earth and sun and moon are gorgeous as seen from up here,
But the wonders are for me too full of danger and of fear.

I don’t know if I go out I won’t be scorched in midday light
Or I’ll run out of my life in rising storms of awful might…

Walls of old where I have lived for as far back as I can think
From time to time keep telling me from nature I should always shrink.

That Nature is where all things good and wondrous spring with endless joy,
That Nature is where in the end there’s rest for every weary toy;

That Nature yields to all who ask abundance with its softest touch;
That Nature knows all things that fill the field I see, but I’m no such.

Am not nature’s child as are the tiny blades of dewy grass
Or the monsoon’s rainbow arch or insects humming wings of glass.

There is wrath for him who ought to sit beside the window sill
But dares to come out on the field and angers Nature with his will.

Mountains spewing fire, waves of water rising mountain-high
Are nature’s tools of wrath for him who exists only in a lie.

The walls have told me I’m not true, I ought to wait for end to come –
If most are to be happy, sadder have to be the lots of some.

There is nothing I can do I wait beside the window pane
Scribbling lines without a meaning – write, but not for meaning I strain.

I write the beauty of the world which through the glass now has my faith;
I just write, I don’t go out, and I have faith too in my death.