35 quotes
He must return,
first, in Divine patience, and know
hunger again, and give
to humble friends the joy
of giving Him food — fish and a honeycomb.
A Door in the Hive (1989)
I like the juicy stem of grass that grows
within the coarser leaf folded round,
and the butteryellow glow in the narrow flute from which the morning-glory
opens blue and cool on a hot morning.
With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads (1960)
I am not joking. I'm speaking
of spirit. Not dogma but spirit. The Way.
To leave the open fields
and enter the forest, that was the rite.
Knowing there was mystery, they could go.
Go back now! And he receded among the multitude of forms, the twists and shadows they saw now, listening to the hum of the world's wood.
The Novices (1960)
The music reached us. Clumsily,
stumbling over our own roots,
rustling our leaves
in answer,
we moved, we followed.
A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)
Not for one second
will my self hold still, but wanders
anywhere,
everywhere it can turn. Not you,
it is I am absent.
A Door in the Hive (1989)
You are the stream, the fish, the light,
the pulsing shadow.
You the unchanging presence, in whom all
moves and changes.
How can I focus my flickering, perceive
at the fountain's heart
the sapphire I know is there?
A Door in the Hive (1989)
Lord, not you,
it is I who am absent.
A Door in the Hive (1989)
The poet
never must lose despair.
Delivered out of raw continual pain,
smell of darkness, groans of those others
to whom he was chained — unchained, and led
past the sleepers,
door after door silently opening —
out!
Oblique Prayers (1984)
Perhaps he will not return. But what we have lived omes back to us. We see more. We feel, as our rings increase,
something that lifts our branches, that stretches our furthest leaf-tips
further.
To serve the people,
one must write for the ideal reader. Only for the ideal reader.
And who or what is that ideal reader? God. One must imagine,
One must deeply imagine
I was seed again.
I was fern in the swamp.
I was coal.
A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)
In the forest
they too had heard,
and were pulling their roots in pain
out of a thousand years' layers of dead leaves,
rolling the rocks away,
breaking themselves
out of
their depths.
A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)
In the dark I rest,
unready for the light which dawns
day after day,
eager to be shared.
Black silk, shelter me.
I need
more of the night before I open
eyes and heart
to illumination. I must still
grow in the dark like a root
not ready, not ready at all.