My Favorite Poem (right now)

Now I Become Myself
By May Sarton

Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places,
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before—"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or the love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand, the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
From my work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Fall but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song.
Made so and rooted so by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live.
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!