Single Vision

by Stanley Kunitz

Before I am completely shriven

I shall reject my inch of heaven.

Cancel my eyes, and, standing, sink

Into my deepest self; there drink

Memory down. The banner of

My blood, unfurled, will not be love,

Only the pity and the pride

Of it, pinned to my open side.

When I have utterly refined

The composition of my mind,

Shaped language of my marrow till

Its forms are instant to my will,

Suffered the leaf of my heart to fall

Under the wind, and, stripping all

The tender blanket from my bone,

Rise like a skeleton in the sun,

I shall have risen to disown

The good mortality I won.

Drectly risen with the stain

Of life upon my crested brain,

Which I shall shake against my ghost

To frighten him, when I am lost.

Gladly as any poison, yield

My halved conscience, brightly peeled;

Infect him, since we live but once,

With the unused evil in my bones.

I'll shed the tear of souls, the true

Sweat, Blake's intellectual dew,

Before I am resigned to slip

A dusty finger on my lip.