Love not too much. But how,
When thou hast made me such,
And dost thy gifts bestow,
How can I love too much?
Though I must fear to lose,
And drown my joy in care,
With all its thorns I choose
The path of love and prayer.
Primeval
A man with binoculars
fixed a shape in the field
and we stopped and saw
the albino buck browsing
in the oats — white dash
on a page of green,
flick of a blade
cutting paint to canvas.
It dipped its head
People, don't ask me again where my shoes are.
The valley I walked through was frozen to me
as I was to it. My heavy hide, my zinc
talisman — I'm fine, people. Don't stare
at my feet. And don't flash the sign of the cross
in my face. I carry the Blue Cross Card —
card among cards, card of my number
and gold seal. So shall ye know I am of
the system, in the beast's belly and up
to here, people, with your pity.
I don’ t buy it, says
the scientist.
Replies the frail
and faithful heart,
it’ s not for sale.
I came awake in kindergarten,
under the letter K chalked neat
on a field-green placard leaned
on the blackboard's top edge. They'd cagedme
in a metal desk — the dull word writ
to show K's sound. But K meant kick and kill
His death in Benares
Won’ t save the assassin
From certain hell,
Any more than a dip
In the Ganges will send
Frogs — or you — to paradise.
My home, says Kabir,
Is where there’ s no day, no night,
And no holy book in sight
To squat on our lives.
Don’ t get me wrong: I know
that knowledge is power,
that mystery’ s water,
that hunger makes
a gargantuan
lover,
and yes, I’ ve drunk
of the river Lethe,
from the breath of the Celts,
from the echo of
It was a picture I had after the war.
A bombed English church. I was too young
to know the word English or war,
but I knew the picture.
The ruined city still seemed noble.
The cathedral with its roof blown off
was not less godly. The church was the same
plus rain and sky. Birds flew in and out
of the holes God’ s fist made in the walls.
It wasn't bliss. What was bliss
but the ordinary life? She'd spend hours
in patter, moving through whole days
touching, sniffing, tasting... exquisite
housekeeping in a charmed world.
And yet there was always
