Walking Away by Cecil Day-Lewis


It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day –
A sunny day with leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play 
Your first game of football, then, like a satellite 
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school 
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free 
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.

That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature’s give-and-take – the small, the scorching 
Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.

I have had worse partings, but none that so 
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly 
Saying what God alone could perfectly show – 
How selfhood begins with a walking away, 
And love is proved in the letting go.

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