Sara Teasdale

The Crystal Gazer
By Sara Teasdale

I shall gather myself into my self again,
I shall take my scattered selves and make them one,
I shall fuse them into a polished crystal ball
where I can see the moon and the flashing sun,
I shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intend,
Watching the future come and the present go -
And the little shifting pictures of people rushing
In tiny self-importance to and fro.

I can understand the scattered selves and the desire to see them gathered into one. I had that wish for a long time until it was accomplished, so that I could see the world as one person. I am not writing this to say that was the poet's meaning here is the same. I don't know. The meaning can be anything the reader wants it to be. I know that I had the vision of watching the world go around me thinking that everyone was running around in their smug little worlds little knowing the Hellfire that I was in. That was then and not now.

One time, I connected with a man who I knew in junior high school and high school and he told me about many of the people that I identified as those smug well-adjusted people. It was one of those websites where you could re-connect with those you knew in high school. He had paid his dues to the site and was connecting with those he remembered. He told me that many of them were not so happy. One woman who was a straight A student who I thought would be a very successful intellectual somewhere had committed suicide shortly after high school graduation. Another young man who I was not surprised had done the same. I remember talking to her. She had taken an interest in me, but I was sure it was not real and ignored her. Others he told me about had been going through similar situations. I guess I was egotistical enough to think I was the only one. He thought I was well adjusted. I had to laugh.

Poets have the gift to re-connect us with our forgotten selves because they are sensitive to the forces that tear our lives apart and cause us so much grief except they can write about it. I suffered in silence. I wrote in my journal but not in any great amount of honestly. I was trying so hard to change things and thought no one else was going through what I was. I now know that wasn't true.