I leave to the blind and deaf
The soul with boundaries,
For I would feel all things
In all manner of ways.
I muse on earth and heaven
From heights of consciousness –
Innocent: for my eyes
Glimpse nothing I possess.
But I see, so intently –
Dispersed through what I see –
That in each thought I am,
At once, a different me.
And as those things are fragments
Of being in dispersion,
I split my soul up, each
And if I see my soul
With another view,
I ask, Is that a basis
For judgement that holds true?
Ah, just as for land and sea
And boundless sky. He errs
Who thinks himself his own.
Not mine, I am diverse.
Let me – if things are fragments
Of universal mind –
Be the pieces of myself,
Various, undefined.
If all I feel is other
And self apart from me,
How did the soul’s end
Become identity?
Thus I conform to what
God’s made from the first days;
God’s way is different
And I am different ways.
Thus I ape God, who when
He made what is, withdrew
Infinity from it
And even oneness too.
There was a rhythm in my sleep.
I have lost it – when I woke it went.
Why did I ever lead my life
What was it, that which was not? I
Know that it lulled me sweetly then,
As though the very lulling sought
To make me who I am again.
Music there was which, when I woke
From dreaming it, broke off. The link,
Though, did not die: the theme goes on
In what impels me not to think.
I am a keeper of flocks.
The flock is my thoughts
And my thoughts are all sensations.
I think with my eyes and with my ears
And with my hands and feet
And with my nose and mouth.
Thinking a flower is to see it and smell it
And eating a fruit is to taste its meaning.
That’s why, on a hot day,
When I feel sad at so much delight,
And I stretch out on the grass
And close my warm eyes,
I feel my whole body stretched out in what’s real,
‘Hey, keeper of flocks,
You, there at the roadside,
What does the wind tell you, passing by?’
‘That it’s the wind, and that it passes,
And that it’s already passed before,
And that it’ll pass again.
And what does it say to you?’
‘A great deal more than that.
It speaks of so much more to me.
Of memories and desires
And of things that never were.’
‘You’ve never heard the wind passing.
Wind is all that the wind speaks of.
What you heard it say was a lie,
And the lie is your own.’
You who, believing in your Christs and Marys,
Trouble the limpid waters of my spring,
And do so but to tell me
That other kinds of water
In better times bathe meadows somewhere else –
Why speak to me of other realms if these
Meadows and streams delight me
And are of here and now?
The gods gave this reality, and gave it
This outwardness to make it real indeed.
What are my dreams, if not
Leave me Reality, that is of the moment –
Also my tranquil and immediate gods
Who do not live in Vagueness
But in fields, and in rivers.
Let life go by for me in pagan fashion
To the accompaniment of slender pipes
Whereby the reedy banks
Of streams acknowledge Pan.
Live in your dreams and leave to me the deathless
Altars whereon I make observances,
Leave me the seen presence
Of gods who are most near.
You who court vainly what excels this life,
Leave life to those with faith in something older
Than Christ upon his cross
And Mary weeping.
Comfort me, Ceres, lady of the fields,
Apollo, Venus, and archaic Uranus,
And thunderbolts, compelling,
Being from the hand of Jove.