A Strange Sight Still

Once, in the first thin weather of spring,
When frost still lived in the roots of the grass,
And the light came slowly
As though the world had not yet decided
Whether to wake,

A daffodil opened on the moor.

No sheltered bank had raised it.
No orchard grass had kept it.
No wood-edge, damp with shade
and birdsong,
Had made a place for it there.

It stood instead among bent heather,
Coarse sedge, peat-dark hollows,
And the long bare breathing of the
upland wind.

It was gold where all else was weather-coloured.

It was bright where all else endured.

And from the first moment it knew itself,
It knew also that something was wrong.

For there were no others.

No yellow heads answered the light beside it.
No soft company of its own kind
Moved in the morning air.

Only the moor, wide and rough,
With its old patient ground
And its distances
That offered nothing back.

At first the daffodil tried not to mind.

It lifted its face to the pale sun.
It listened to the wind’s long telling.
It watched skylarks rise
Like thrown notes
And vanish into height.

But loneliness,
When it comes early enough,
Does not always enter as sorrow.

Sometimes it enters first as bewilderment.

Why am I here?
Thought the daffodil.

Why am I the only one?

And because no answer came,
It looked farther.

Perhaps, it thought,
Beyond the next rise
There would be others.

Perhaps beyond the next.

Perhaps the moor was only the wrong beginning
To a better story.

So all that first morning
It gazed toward the horizon
As if distance itself
Might explain it.

And when evening fell cold and colourless,
And still no yellow answered,
The daffodil bowed its head
And wept.

Its tears were small.
The moor was large.
No one might have blamed the world
For failing to notice.

But near the daffodil,
Low to the ground
Where the wind passed differently,
A little tormentil grew among the rough grass.

It had four yellow petals
No larger than dropped light,
And leaves close to the earth
Like folded green hands.

It had heard the weeping long before it spoke.

At last it said,

Why do you grieve
As though spring
Had already ended?

The daffodil startled,
For grief is always lonelier
Before it is heard.

It turned,
And seeing only the small flower
At first thought
The question must belong
To someone else.

But the tormentil waited.

Then the daffodil said

Because I do not belong here.

The little flower did not argue.

That, perhaps,
Was the first kindness.

Instead it asked,

How do you know?

And the daffodil answered,

Because there are no others like me.

The tormentil considered this
As small, careful things do.
It looked over the moor,
At heather still dark with cold,
At sedge and moss,
At the black shine of wet ground in the hollows,
At the far line of sky.

Then it said,

That is not the same thing.

But the daffodil,
Who had sorrow enough for one morning,
Mistook this for disagreement
And bowed lower still.

You are kind,
It said,
But you are not a daffodil.

No,
Said the tormentil.
And no flower
Should have to cry unheard
On so large a moor.

There are times
When love begins
Not in understanding,
But in pity
That stays long enough
To become something finer.

By noon the tormentil had made up its mind.

If you seek your own kind,
It said,
I will go with you
As far as I may.

The daffodil lifted its head.

You would do that?

You are plainly unhappy,
Said the tormentil.
And I have never trusted
The kind of happiness
That leaves sorrow
To manage itself.

So it was decided.

The uprooting hurt.

No flower, however restless,
Lets go of earth
Without learning
What earth had held.

The tormentil came free first,
With little complaint
And much effort.
The daffodil followed,
Awkward with hope,
Shaken by the strange pain
Of becoming movable.

Then together,
With roots full of clinging soil
And stems not made for travel,
They began across the moor.

The wind met them at once.

The daffodil,
Used already to imagining
A gentler country ahead,
Found the open ground
Wilder than expected.

Here the ridges gave no shelter
For long.
Here the earth changed underfoot
Without warning.
Here a bright thing
Was easily seen
And easily wearied.

But hope,
At the beginning of a journey,
Has a strength
Almost equal to ignorance.

All that day the daffodil looked onward.

It spoke of valleys crowded with gold.
Of banks beneath old trees.
Of meadows
Where one bloom answered another
As stars answer stars.

The tormentil listened
And did not say
That it had never seen
Such a place.

Toward evening the weather turned.

A wind came low over the rise,
Not cruel,
But sure of itself,
As upland winds are.
The grass bent first.
Then the reeds.
Then the heather
Shivered under its passing.

And there,
On a slope of dry poor ground
Where little stood long untested,
They found the harebell.

Its stem was bowed
Almost flat to the earth.
Its blue bells,
Delicate as held breath,
Trembled in the gusting air
As though one more touch
Would finish them.

The daffodil cried out,

It is broken.

But the tormentil,
Who knew something
Of low-growing strength,
Said only,

Wait.

So they waited.

And after a little while,
Between one gust
And the next,
The harebell lifted.

Not quickly.
Not proudly.
Only enough
To continue being itself.

The daffodil stared.

I thought the wind
Had defeated you.

The harebell’s bells
Moved softly in the air.

The wind defeats
What insists
On meeting it all at once,
It said.

Then it added,

There are many things
One survives
By learning
How not to stand against them.

Its voice was so light
The daffodil almost missed it.

Yet the words remained.

That night the three of them
Settled in the lee of a stone,
Where the air was thinner
And the dark came kindly.

The daffodil spoke again
Of fields of daffodils.

The harebell listened
With the grave courtesy
Of the easily wounded.

The tormentil said little.

For sometimes
What we most want
Is not correction
But witness,
And sometimes even witness
Cannot close the distance
Between desire
And what is near at hand.

In the morning
The harebell asked
If it might travel with them
For a while.

There is little company
On the high ground,
It said,
And one learns too much silence
If one keeps only the wind.

So it joined them.

Now there were three,
And the daffodil,
Though glad of the company,
Still thought of them
As wayfarers only.

They were kind,
But not yet answer.

So they went on.

The moor grew wetter.

Dry turf gave way to trembling ground.
The grasses changed.
Water held the sky
In dark pieces
Between hummocks of moss.
Every step
Had to be chosen.

This place is empty,
Said the daffodil at last,
After a long difficult crossing
In which beauty
Had not seemed to it
To do much good.

Only to those
Who do not know
How to read it,
Said a voice
From the wet ground ahead.

There,
Bright as a small fixed flame
In the sour earth,
Stood Bog Asphodel.

Its yellow stars
Rose cleanly
From the bog’s dark skin.
No flourish marked it.
No softness.
It seemed made
Not for admiration
But for exact survival.

The daffodil,
Already tired
And not disposed to be instructed
By another yellow flower
Who was not a daffodil,
Said,

What is there to read
In a place
That would drown a root
For carelessness?

Bog Asphodel replied,

That the ground
Does not cease to be living
Because it is difficult.

The tormentil approved this.
The harebell lowered its bells
In thought.

But the daffodil,
Whose sorrow had taught it
To mistake harshness for emptiness,
Looked over the bog
And saw only discomfort.

Then one step later
Its root caught in the moss,
The ground gave under it,
And only the quick warning
Of Bog Asphodel
Kept it from sinking deeper
Into black water and peat.

There,
Said Bog Asphodel,
Pointing with a narrow leaf,
Not there.

The crossing that followed
Was slow and exacting.

Bog Asphodel led.
Tormentil steadied.
Harebell listened for the tremor
In the earth before each step.

The daffodil,
Forced now to trust
What it would not have chosen,
Followed in humbled silence.

When at last
They reached firmer ground,
The daffodil said,

I had not thought
Anything could love
Such a place.

Bog Asphodel answered,

Love is not always
What comes after comfort.

Then, after a pause,
It said,

I will go with you
A little way.

The tormentil was unsurprised.
The harebell seemed glad.
The daffodil thanked it.

Yet privately
It still thought,

This is not what I seek.

So there were four.

Rain found them
On the open reach
North of the bog.

It came not in fury
But in persistence,
A grey weather
That moved into stem and leaf
And made every weight
A little harder to bear.

The daffodil,
Whose bright cup
Had once held light,
Now held cold water.

The harebell shook.
The tormentil drew near
Without speaking.
Bog Asphodel merely endured,
As though rain
Were another form of fact.

By evening
The daffodil,
Heavy with wet
And weariness,
Whispered,

If there were others like me,
They would know
How this feels.

The tormentil,
Who had been beside it
Since the first morning,
Said nothing.

But the harebell
Turned its blue bells
Toward the daffodil
And answered quietly,

Those who are unlike you
May still stand in the same rain.

The words entered the daffodil
But did not stay.

Some griefs
Are too occupied with themselves
To let meaning settle at once.

When the rain passed,
The light returned strangely.

All the bog
Shone silver-white
Where seedheads caught it.
The air seemed full
Of wandering softness.

What the daffodil first took
For scraps of cloud
Caught low over the ground
Turned out instead
To be cotton-grass.

Tuft after tuft
It stood in the wet places,
Each one lifting
Its pale loose heads
As though the moor
Were dreaming itself aloud.

Among them moved
One especially airy stem
Who seemed less planted
Than persuaded to remain.

You look as though
You have lost something,
Said Cotton-grass
To the daffodil.

I have,
Said the daffodil.
My own kind.

Cotton-grass nodded
As though this were grave
And ordinary at once.

I lose parts of myself
To the wind each year,
It said.
One must be careful
Not to name every loosening
A ruin.

Bog Asphodel
Made a sound
Of doubtful patience.

But Cotton-grass,
Who had likely spent
Its whole life
Being underestimated
By more substantial things,
Went on.

See how the moor
Keeps what seems fleeting.
Mist. Light. Seed. Birdsong.
Even sorrow,
For a while.

The daffodil did not know
What to do with this.

Yet something
In the white swaying brightness
Lifted the edge
Of its despair.

So Cotton-grass joined them too.

Now there were five.

And if anyone had seen them then
From the shoulder of the hill
They might have thought
No stranger fellowship
Had ever crossed the moor:

A daffodil gold as promise,
A low tormentil,
A blue-belled harebell,
A strict bog asphodel,
And a wandering tuft of white
That seemed made
Of wind’s own thoughts.

Yet difference,
When it consents
To travel together,
Begins to make
Its own kind of form.

They had not gone far
Before the day gave them work.

On the edge
Of a sheep-trodden path
They found a young orchid
Bent hard into the mud,
Its stem half-crushed,
Its narrow flowers
Spattered with dark water.

The daffodil,
Seeing the western light
Already lowering,
Said first,

We should go on.
There will be no end
To stopping
If the whole moor
Requires saving.

That was true.

And also
Not the whole truth.

The tormentil moved at once to the orchid.

The harebell came close.
Bog Asphodel examined
The ground and the damage.
Cotton-grass,
Who seemed for once
Not airy at all,
Noticed a dry firmer place
Just beyond the churned path.

Then the tormentil looked up
At the daffodil.

It did not accuse.
That made it worse.

So the daffodil,
Ashamed of the haste
Its longing had made of it,
Went back.

Together
They eased the orchid upright.
They pressed soil where it was needed.
They steadied what remained
And set it where the trampling
Would less likely find it again.

The orchid,
Faint but living,
Could offer them nothing
But a little breath of thanks.

Yet when they left,
The daffodil felt
A change so slight
It might have been mistaken
For weather.

For the first time
Since leaving its own lonely place,
Its sorrow
Had not been the whole day.

That night
They rested by a pool
That held the last light
Like old pewter.

And because hard acts
Sometimes open talk
Better than ease does,
They began to speak
Of what each one knew.

The tormentil knew
How to see hurt early.

The harebell knew
How to hear weather
Before it arrived.

Bog Asphodel knew
Which ground deceived.

Cotton-grass knew
Where beauty hid
In the bleakest places.

Then the harebell asked
The daffodil,

And what do you know?

The daffodil,
Who had expected to be asked
What it sought,
Not what it gave,
Was quiet a long while.

At last it said,

I know how to long.

Cotton-grass,
With more seriousness
Than usual,
Answered,

That is not nothing.

A flower that never looked beyond itself
Would never have led us anywhere.

Bog Asphodel added,

Restlessness is a poor home
But a useful engine.

Even the tormentil smiled.

The daffodil
Wanted to be comforted by this.

It almost was.

But before sleep took them
It looked again
Toward the dark line of distance
And thought,

Still, none of them
Are daffodils.

So the journey went on.

They climbed to higher ground
Where the moor opened vast and bare,
And the wind wrote long invisible lines
Through the bent grasses.

Once, from a rise,
The daffodil saw a sweep of yellow
Far off in the late sun
And gave a cry
That startled even the larks.

But when they came
To where the gold had seemed to gather,
It was only gorse catching light
On a lower slope,
Or bog asphodel massed
In a wet bright place
The daffodil could not love.

Hope,
When mistaken,
Often wounds more sharply
Than despair.

That evening
The daffodil spoke
More bitterly than before.

When I find them,
It said,
I will remember
That you were good to me.

The words were meant
As gratitude.

But gratitude
Can sometimes fail
By naming too clearly
What it does not yet value.

The tormentil
Turned its face away.

The harebell fell silent.
Bog Asphodel’s narrow bloom
Seemed to sharpen
With disapproval.

Only Cotton-grass
Tried to pretend
The wind had said it.

The daffodil,
Already lost in the ache
Of what it had not found,
Did not understand
What it had done.

There are injuries
More quietly made
Than blows.

Days later
They came into heather country,
Where purple still waited
Below the green,
And the old dry stems
Held the memory
Of last year’s bloom.

Heather grew there
In broad company,
Not singular like the others,
But multitudinous,
A whole gathered nation
Of low, weathered life.

From this depth of rootedness
A voice came,
Older than any single stem.

You are far-travelled
For such a small company.

It was Heather.

The daffodil,
Seeing at once
What it took to be
A happiness denied to it,
Said,

At least you are surrounded
By your own.

Heather answered,

That is one way
To describe a moor.

The daffodil,
Too tired to read
Wryness in wisdom,
Said no more.

But Heather,
Who had seen many seasons
Misunderstand themselves,
Asked,

And what is it
You seek so faithfully?

My own kind,
Said the daffodil.

Heather was silent
Long enough
For the wind to pass between them.

At last it said,

Be careful.

Many a lonely thing
Has mistaken resemblance
For refuge.

The daffodil
Did not like this.

Because it was tired.
Because it was still young
In sorrow.
Because truths
One is not ready for
Often sound at first
Like refusals.

So they moved on.

By now
The company had the rhythm
Of true fellowship,
Though the daffodil
Would not yet have named it so.

The tormentil
Noticed first
When anyone lagged.

The harebell
Could tell from the air
Whether the weather would turn.

Bog Asphodel
Walked the difficult ground
Without wasting steps.

Cotton-grass
Found light
Even in standing water.

And the daffodil,
Though it did not know it,
Kept hope alive
On days when no one else
Would have thought to continue.

Difference,
Given weather enough together,
Becomes a kind of kinship.

Then came the hard night.

A late storm
Swept the moor without warning.
Rain struck slantwise.
Wind drove over the ridge
With such force
Even Heather would have bent to it.

The company scattered first,
Then drew together again
By effort, not by accident.

The harebell
Was nearly flattened into the rushes.
Cotton-grass vanished twice
Into the white confusion
Of its own tossing heads.
The tormentil
Clung low and called out.
Bog Asphodel
Held as if fastened to the weather itself.

And in that violence
The daffodil,
Who had thought so long
Of who would understand it,
Found itself acting
Before thought.

It threw what shelter it could
Over the harebell.
It bent its own bright head
Against the worst of the rain.
It called for Cotton-grass
Until the white tuft answered
From the bog edge.

No one spoke of this later.
The storm was too large
To make any single act
Seem noble.

Yet something had changed.

For love,
Before it is understood,
Is often enacted first
As instinct.

Morning found them
Mud-marked, exhausted,
And quieter than before.

The sky had washed clear.
Every hollow held new light.
The moor smelled of rain,
Peat,
And bruised green things.

Then the daffodil,
Looking east once more,
Said under its breath,

When I find where I belong,

You speak
As though none of us are real,
Said Bog Asphodel.

The words fell cleanly.
No anger raised them.
That made them impossible to evade.

The daffodil stared.

Bog Asphodel went on.

You thank us
As travellers thank an inn,
Useful for a night
Before the true road resumes.

You speak of belonging
As though it lies always elsewhere,
And of us
As though we are only weather
You happened to meet.

The tormentil
Wanted to soften this.
The harebell
Looked hurt already.
Cotton-grass
Lost even its usual lightness.

The daffodil answered,
Stung more by accuracy
Than by blame,

That is not fair.

No?
Said Bog Asphodel.
Then tell me this.

If you had found
Other daffodils on the first day,
Would you have turned back
For any one of us?

The daffodil did not answer.

For there are questions
That do not accuse,
Yet leave nowhere
For falsehood to stand.

At length it said,

I am grateful.

Bog Asphodel replied,

Gratitude
Is not the same
As seeing.

They went on in silence.

The tormentil stayed near
But not close enough
To call itself consolation.

The harebell
Spoke only to the wind.
Cotton-grass,
Who had always found something
To marvel at,
Let whole bright things pass
Without naming them.

The daffodil,
Full now of shame
And a loneliness
More complicated than before,
Could neither defend itself
Nor yet fully repent.

For part of it
Still longed on.

And part of it
Had begun at last
To feel what its longing
Had cost.

Toward evening
It said quietly
To the tormentil,

I did not mean,

I know,
Said the little flower.

That was the second kindness.

But kindness,
When hurt,
Has a different weight.

Days later
They came to the last rise.

It was not marked
As endings are in stories.
No sign stood there.
No sudden revelation
Opened in the ground.

Only a long ascent
Over weather-thinned turf,
And beyond it
More moor.

The daffodil climbed first,
Driven now less by hope
Than by the need
To prove hope wrong or right
Before its bloom gave out.

The others followed,
Tired enough
To let silence
Do most of the work.

At the top
The daffodil stopped.

The whole moor
Lay spread beneath them.
Ridges. Bog. Heather.
Stream. Stone.
Distance after distance
Without answer.

No field of daffodils
Shone nearby.
No golden host
Waited beyond the next fold of earth.

Only the great rough country
And the company
Who had crossed it.

Something in the daffodil
Gave way then.

Not like a branch.
Not like a stem in wind.
More like a belief
That has held too long
Without being true.

This is the end of me,
It said.

The words were not dramatic.
They were tired.

I have brought you
All this way
For nothing.

There is nowhere for me.
I was wrong to think
There would be.

I will stay here now
And wilt.

No one hurried to contradict it.

That was their final mercy.

For despair
Is often loneliest
When too quickly answered.

The daffodil bowed itself
To the ground.

Then the tormentil said,

Very well.

The daffodil lifted its head a little,
Not understanding.

This seems as good a place
As any,
Said the tormentil,
And settled near.

The harebell came too,
Its blue bells trembling
In the thinning light.

I have known worse places
Than one
Where sorrow speaks honestly,
It said.

Bog Asphodel
Took its place
Without ceremony.

The ground is firm enough,
It said.

Cotton-grass drifted close
And let its white heads
Move softly above them all.

If we are to come to the end,
It said,
Let it at least be somewhere
The sky can find us.

And Heather,
Who had followed farther
Than old rooted things
Are expected to follow,
Settled in their midst
Like a piece of moor
That had chosen
To love particularly.

So there they remained.

Not persuading.
Not correcting.
Only staying.

The wind moved over them.
The last light faded.
The first stars
Opened their far cold flowers.

And as the dark deepened,
The daffodil,
Who had spent so long
Looking away,
Began at last
To look near.

It saw the tormentil,
Small as ever,
Closer than any promise
Had a right to be.

It saw the harebell,
Who had bent so often
And yet remained.

It saw Bog Asphodel,
Whose severity
Had been another form of care.

It saw Cotton-grass,
Who had made even desolation
Less absolute.

It saw Heather,
Who had known from the first
What kind of lesson
This was.

And memory,
Which often understands late
What the heart was given early,
Began to gather its pieces.

The first morning.
The hearing of tears.
The rain shared.
The bog crossed.
The orchid lifted.
The storm weathered.
The silences kept.

The daffodil did not sleep.

When dawn came
It came slowly,
Unfolding the moor
In bands of pearl and grey.

The air was cold enough
To make every colour
Arrive carefully.

Then, as the sun rose higher,
Its light touched a far valley
Beyond the last shoulder
Of the upland.

And there,

So distant
It might once have seemed
Another trick of brightness,

The daffodil saw them.

A field of gold.

A whole shining company
Of daffodils
Miles away,
Gathered thick
In a lower gentler place
Where the land folded in
And the light rested.

For a moment
The world stood still.

The daffodil’s whole sorrow
Turned toward that sight
As water turns
Toward a lowered hand.

It had been right.

There were others.

There was such a place.

All the old longing
Rose at once
With almost unbearable force.

Slowly
The daffodil drew itself upright.

No one stopped it.

That mattered.

For love
That is real
Does not make a cage
Of its devotion.

The daffodil looked
From the far field
To the flowers beside it.

To the tormentil.
To the harebell.
To Bog Asphodel.
To Cotton-grass.
To Heather.

And then,
With a clarity
Greater than joy
And gentler than grief,
It understood.

All this while
It had not been searching
Only for daffodils.

It had been searching
For the place
Where it would no longer
Be alone.

And that place
Had not waited
At the end of the journey.

It had been walking beside it
Across the moor.

It had been the small flower
Who heard weeping.
The blue one
Who knew the rain.
The bright stern one
Who named truth.
The white drifting one
Who kept wonder alive.
The old rooted one
Who understood staying.

The daffodil thought then
Of every time
It had looked beyond them,
Every time
It had mistaken love
For delay,
Companionship
For passing kindness,
Difference
For distance.

And because true recognition
Almost always carries
A little shame with it,
The daffodil bowed its head.

I was wrong,
It said.

No one answered at once.

The morning,
Having waited so long
For this,
Was allowed its silence.

Then the tormentil said,

Yes.

But not too late.

The harebell’s bells
Moved in the new light.

Some understandings
Cannot be hurried,
It said.

Bog Asphodel added,

At least this one
Was not lost entirely
To longing.

Cotton-grass shone
Like blown milkweed in the sun.

And now,
It said,
You may look at distant gold
Without calling it home.

Heather,
Who had no need
To improve upon the moment,
Said only,

Stay.

So the daffodil remained.

Not because longing
Had altogether left it,
For some longings
Do not vanish.
They are only gentled
By being given
Their proper place.

And when the light was kind
It would still look
Toward the far soft valley
Where the daffodils
Burned gold together
In the lower fields.

But it no longer mistook
That brightness for home.

For home had been made elsewhere,
On the high rough moor,
By small steadfast things
Who had stayed.

The years went over them.

Rain came.
Cold lingered.
Heather darkened and flowered.
Mist filled the hollows.
Larks rose and vanished
Into the white spring sky.

And each of those first flowers,
In time,
Went the way of flowers.

The tormentil,
The harebell,
Bog Asphodel,
Cotton-grass,
Heather,
And the daffodil too,

All were taken back
Into root, seed, earth,
And weather.

But the moor remembered.

For where they had rested,
And where at last
The daffodil had learned
What sort of thing
Belonging was,
There spring after spring
New flowers rose.

Not the same flowers.
Never the same.
And yet not wholly other.

For the tormentil returned
In its scattered gold.
The harebell in blue tremors.
Bog Asphodel in bright wet stars.
Cotton-grass in wandering white.
Heather in its old faithful spread.

And among them,
Year after year,
On that unlikely ground,
There shone a daffodil.

Gold on the moor.

A strange sight still.
And a beautiful one.

And if, when evening came
Upon the moor,
And the last light
Caught that single daffodil
Standing there
Among the rougher blooms,

Who could look at it
And not feel
That something of them still remained,

Not in sorrow,
But in the ground itself,

As though love,
Once given there,
Had entered the place so deeply
It went on flowering
Long after those who gave it
Were gone.