I was born with ten thousand mouths,
all of them hungry. Feed me,
I said to the lake, and it spilled into me
its deep green and its months of ice
and its forgotten bottom. Feed me,
I said to the hill, and it filled me
with shadows and stones
and the tunnels of mice. Feed me,
I said to the mountain, and it served me
glacier and couloir and avalanche paths.
And still I was hungry. Feed me, I said,
to the book, to the priest, to the tree,
to the moon, to the man, to the boy,
to the song, to the earth. And I ate
and I ate and I ate and still I was hungry.
Feed me, said the world. And I did.
I fed it my heart, my hours, my eyes.
And for the first time, I felt full.
I was born out of loss. Year after year,
I took the world into me. At last
I find myself in the world.