That whenever I come to the fountain
to drink I find the living water itself
thirsty;
And it drinks me while I drink it.
*****
Some of you have deemed me proud and
over-shy to receive gifts.
Too proud indeed am I to receive wages,
but not gifts.
And though I have eaten berries among
the hills when you would have had me sit
at your board,
And slept in the portico of the temple
when you would gladly have sheltered me,
Yet was it not your loving mindfulness
of my days and my nights that made food
sweet to my mouth and girdled my sleep
with visions?
For this I bless you most:
You give much and know not that you give
at all.
Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to
stone,
And a good deed that calls itself by
tender names becomes the parent to a
curse.
*****
And some of you have called me aloof,
and drunk with my own aloneness,
And you have said, “He holds council
with the trees of the forest, but not
with men.
He sits alone on hill-tops and looks
down upon our city.”
True it is that I have climbed the hills
and walked in remote places.
How could I have seen you save from a
great height or a great distance?
How can one be indeed near unless he be
far?
And others among you called unto me, not
in words, and they said,
“Stranger, stranger, lover of
unreachable heights, why dwell you among
the summits where eagles build
their nests?
Why seek you the unattainable?
What storms would you trap in your net,
And what vaporous birds do you hunt in
the sky?
Come and be one of us.
Descend and appease your hunger with our
bread and quench your thirst with our
wine.”
In the solitude of their souls they said
these things;
But were their solitude deeper they
would have known that I sought but the
secret of your joy and your pain,
And I hunted only your larger selves
that walk the sky.
*****
But the hunter was also the hunted;
For many of my arrows left my bow only
to seek my own breast.
And the flier was also the creeper;
For when my wings were spread in the
sun their shadow upon the earth was a
turtle.
And I the believer was also the doubter;
For often have I put my finger
in my own wound that I might have the
greater belief in you and the greater
knowledge of you.
*****
And it is with this belief and this
knowledge that I say,
You are not enclosed within your bodies,
nor confined to houses or fields.
That which is you dwells above the
mountain and roves with the wind.
It is not a thing that crawls into
the sun for warmth or digs holes into
darkness for safety,
But a thing free, a spirit that envelops
the earth and moves in the ether.
If these be vague words, then seek not
to clear them.
Vague and nebulous is the beginning of
all things, but not their end,
And I fain would have you remember me as
a beginning.
Life, and all that lives, is conceived
in the mist and not in the crystal.
And who knows but a crystal is mist in decay?
*****
This would I have you remember in
remembering me:
That which seems most feeble and
bewildered in you is the strongest and
most determined.
Is it not your breath that has erected
and hardened the structure of your
bones?
And is it not a dream which none of you
remember having dreamt, that builded
your city and fashioned all there is in
it?
Could you but see the tides of that
breath you would cease to see all else,
And if you could hear the whispering of
the dream you would hear no other sound.
But you do not see, nor do you hear, and
it is well.
The veil that clouds your eyes shall be
lifted by the hands that wove it,
And the clay that fills your ears shall
be pierced by those fingers that kneaded
it.
And you shall see.
And you shall hear.
Yet you shall not deplore having known
blindness, nor regret having been deaf.
For in that day you shall know the
hidden purposes in all things,
And you shall bless darkness as you
would bless light.
After saying these things he looked
about him, and he saw the pilot of his
ship standing by the helm and gazing
now at the full sails and now at the
distance.
And he said:
Patient, over patient, is the captain of
my ship.
The wind blows, and restless are the
sails;
Even the rudder begs direction;
Yet quietly my captain awaits my
silence.
And these my mariners, who have heard
the choir of the greater sea, they too
have heard me patiently.
Now they shall wait no longer.