West with the Night

I have learned that if you must leave
a place that you have lived in and loved
and where all your yesterdays
are buried deep...

Leave it any way except a slow way,
leave it the fastest way you can.
never turn back,
and never believe that an hour
you remember is a better hour,
because it is dead.

Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones,
while the future lives in a cloud,
formidable from a distance.

The cloud clears as you enter it.

I have learned this, but like everyone,
I learned it late.

— Beryl Markham, ‘West With The Night,’ 1942