The Green Light by Robert Lowell

It was in the North, Barbara said,
I was much farther than I had to go.
I was in the dark depths where
lungfish play and at sunrise
where the pond meets the river
it’s yellow, bending branches grow.

Across the hills a flickering
white light called the rain-cloud back.
What crawled from the deep ended
too late, I could not touch;
I turned to the sun and the shimmer
of hills where it hung.

The shades deepen in that dim
darkness;
you can feel the seeds rise up
when the threadbare comfort of
thoughts is still the same.

• Robert Lowell