nostalgia

I found this poem, which I'd not read in maybe nine years, and then when I read it I remembered how much I loved it then, how I read it at night over and over and felt overwhelmed by it but also somehow calmed and also sad. even now, after years and years of reading all kinds of things, I still find it lovely and overwhelming and serene and sad. I think it may have to do with the parenthesis, the sideways, quiet tone of parenthesis, and the soft/hard of the knitted locks, the images of threshhold, the implication of working hands in a poem about losing the body. anyway, here it is, for to share:

The Last Invocation

At the last, tenderly,
From the walls of the powerful fortress'd house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well-closed doors,
Let me be wafted.

Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks -- with a whisper,
Set ope the doors O soul.

Tenderly -- be not impatient,
(Strong is your hold O mortal flesh,
Strong is your hold O love.)

- W. Whitman