Sunday, July 08, 2007
If We Could (poem)
1.
If We Could
If we could, for a moment,
just be still,
fold into that infinite
silence, where no thing at all dare intrude,
not the syllables of day,
nor the images of night,
and be with that which is,
its boundaries melting
into our own
for that small second of oneness,
then release,
an outflowing,
all gathered back
into where
the inscrutable races
through the thousand created things.
2.
If we could hold it,
oh, even for one brief moment,
let it brush through us
even as god’s wings brush
over the land
claiming all she passes,
if we could,
just for an instant,
allow ourselves
to be consumed, totally,
in that glory,
that infinite flame,
what might we then become?
(A variation on Rilke’s
“Book of Hours,” based on Denise
Levertov’s recasting of Book 1, Poem 7)
Dorothy Walters
July 8, 2007
