Classic Poem

When it is given you to find a smile
in the tenuous drop of moisture by
the porous stone distilled, in the mist,
in the sun, in the bird and in the wind;

when nothing to your eyes remains inert,
or formless, or colourless, or remote,
and when you penetrate the mystery
and the life of silence, dark and death;

when to the different courses of the cosmos
your gaze extends, and your own effort is
the effort of a powerful microscope
bringing into view invisible worlds;

then in the blazing conflagration of
an infinite and superhuman love,
with the Saint of Assisi you will say
brother to tree and cloud and savage beast.

You will feel in the unnumbered throng
of things and beings the being that is yours;
you will be all terror with the abyss
and with the summit you will be all pride.

The ignoble dust will stir your love
that maculates the whiteness of the lily,
your blessing will be on the sandy beaches,
your adoration for the insect's flight;

and you will kiss the talon of the thorn
and the dahlia's silken draperies. . . .
And you will piously put off your sandals
in order not to bruise the wayside stones.