THE DUSTY BOOKSHELF

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Civilized, crying: how to be human again; this will tell you how.

Turn outward, love things, not men, turn right away from humanity,

Let that doll lie. Consider if you like how the lilies grow,

Lean on the silent rock until you feel its divinity

Make your veins cold; look at the silent stars, let your eyes

Climb the great ladder out of the pit of yourself and man.

Things are so beautiful, your love will follow your eyes;

Things are the God; you will love God and not in vain,

For what we love, we grow to it, we share its nature. At length

You will look back along the star's rays and see that even

The poor doll humanity has a place under heaven.

Its qualities repair their mosaic around you, the chips of strength

And sickness; but now you are free, even to be human,

But born of the rock and the air, not of a woman.

THE ANSWER

Then what is the answer? - Not to be deluded by dreams.

To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,

and their tyrants come, many times before.

When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose

the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.

To keep ones own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted

and not wish for evil; and not be duped

By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will

not be fulfilled.

To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear

the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand

Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars

and his history. . . for contemplation or in fact. . .

Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,

the greatest beauty is

Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty

of the universe. Love that not man

Apart from that, or else you will share man’s pitiful confusions,

or drown in despair when his days darken.

RETURN

A little too abstract, a little too wise

It is time for us to kiss the earth again

It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies

Let the rich life run to the roots again,

I will go down to the lovely Sur rivers

And dip my arms in them up to the shoulders.

I will find my accounting where the alder leaf quivers

In the ocean wind over the river boulders.

I will touch things and things and no more thoughts,

That breed like mouthless May-flies darkening the sky,

The insect clouds that blind our passionate hawks

So that they cannot strike, hardly can fly 

Things are the hawk’s food, and noble is the mountain, Oh noble

Pico Blanco, steep sea wave of marble.

THE BROWN FOREST

I entered the life of the brown forest

And the great life of the ancient peaks, the patience of stone,

I felt the changes in the veins

In the throat of the mountain…

and I was the stream

Draining the mountain wood; and I the stag drinking;

and I was the stars,

Boiling with light, wandering alone, each one the lord of his

own summit; and I was the darkness

Outside the stars, I included them, they were part of me.

I was mankind also, a moving lichen

On the cheek of the round stone…they have not made words for it,

to go behind things, beyond hours and ages,

And be all things in all time, in their returns and passages,

in the motionless and timeless center,

In the white of the fire…how can I express the excellence

I have found, that has no color but clearness;

No honey but ecstasy; nothing wrought nor remembered;

no undertone nor silver second murmur

That rings in love’s voice.