How Many Shadows Has a Man

The dog looked into the water
and as he lost his daily meat
he found an essential truth—
I have never seen a man learn so easily.
I have seen a man walking toward the east
and his shadow was a giant coming to meet him,
I have seen a man walking toward the west
and his shadow was a giant coming to meet him,
I have seen a man stand in the sun at noon
and his shadow was a dwarf between his legs,
yet he was not in them himself and none of them
were what he knew himself to be.
A plowed field laid down in even furrows
in its appointed season reflects the careful farmer
but the image is not the man,
and what substance is there left in granite signals
in souvenirs of the dead
to say more than that a man passed by.
I have looked mainly into the sensitive eyes of women,
into the faces of friends and neighbors and those I love,
I have searched faces I tell you
and each one acknowledged a different man,
how could they name anything as definite
as an apple, an ear of corn or a greeting?
They have not counted black images
swooping silently from my heels like an old suit
with nobody in it.
In my study at night a black giant,
prisoner of the wall and evening lamp,
mocks my head and shoulders and supports them not at all,
a bobbing shape without emotion.
We must plow the long row
that turns the stalks of the old crop under
until we find the tree that grows
from the one root of the essential,
or we shall look to mountains for strength
and to sleep for deliverance.
Until we find the truths that grow
like a tree from our own lives
we will go on numbering shadows
until we are shadows to our sun,
blind to the steady bright reflection
that comes from a deed being done.