Classic Poem

Rooted in quickening soil,
Feeling each day the bursting seed, fed and kept alive by earth's interior nourishment,
Not relying upon any other or expecting any other to rely upon me,
Knowing man can love man roundly only when love is free and that love is not free when it must sue for recognition,
I stand content before the careering storm.

I see the failure that often the applauding multitudes call success,
I see the success that is often called failure,
I see that the seed which comes to nothing, that lies in the ground making no sign, is only postponed, not destroyed,
I see that what is called good and bad in men must be parts of one substance cooperating to a single result,
Everywhere I look do I see postponements, nowhere I look do I see defeats,
I do not time the clock by what I see but by what I do not see,
If the hands of the clock stopped would my faith be transfixed and dead?

I put my ear to the ground, I hear a voice—it is the voice of the seed children not yet called from their play-field:

There is love that holds us here, it refuses still to yield us to the waiting sun, we love our earth mother, she will yet give us to a free will, therefore be patient, keep watch for us at dawn, the trembling aching soil will be eager to deliver.

Give man time to be man,
Stretch his span till the circle is made.

Do you say that time is up, that the hands of the clock have completed their circuit?
See—no sooner is the round complete but it starts with the same pace and purpose another:
Tireless is the hand that winds the clock, tireless I who wait.

There was a signal sent me from the desert dirt,
I push my hand in the gutter and draw forth from the black mud a red-lipped rose,
O rose: your lips I kiss!
I am observed, good men and good women hurry away from the sight of my blasphemy,
They have chosen to press and keep life as a dead leaf between the pages of a book,
In odor of earth and damp of cloud vapor I taste life off the living green leaf,
My cup poured full.

Was ever man torn up by the roots and rendered dead to the wish of the sun?
Why was the way opened and the guest chamber prepared if there was to be no guest?
You have as many reasons for being as there have been seasons in universal time,
You have as many reasons for continuing to be as there are to be seasons in universal time,
You, rooted in quickening soil.