Classic Poem

I SHALL walk the earth and find
Things not colored by the mind.
Let me but receive and take
What is here, nor try to make
Reasons, patterns; let me be
Lost in sensibility.

Let the shapes of flowers press
Simply in the consciousness,
Leaf and petal. Let this tree
Strike its plunging roots in me,
And the wind against the hill
Lift the edges of my will.

I shall curl within the wave,
Suck the stones, and in them crave
Each receding drop of sea.
Skim the sharp-winged bird in me.
Pierce me now the smell of pine
In the sun. I am the wine
Within the grape, the round, sweet
Ripening kernel of the wheat.
I can feel the sickle pass,
Die this death within the grass,
Lean with the cliff's stubbornness,
Surge within the streams that press
On their yielding banks, the flood
Water, rising as my blood
Roaring to the sea, feel tides
Drawing from the ocean's sides;
Till I know the curving turn
Of the earth in space, discern
Space itself, where planets burn . . .