​Ok, knowledge is all about
Getting along with the Pyrenees
If you’re a cloud, to learn
The cross-winds, to slip with ease

Along the northern slope,
But more, to breathe within
The human breath, linking us
To gneiss and jessamine,

So that our eyes draw light
From river ripples’ glint,
Our minds from droplet-hanging
Spider webs among the spearmint, 

So that we are complete.
And that is our thirst,
Our thirst to know
The universe, to be immersed

In a burst of sunlight
That sparkles on the grass
In air that swathes the earth
With glimpses of moon and brass,

Beyond the finest fine,
And the breath within our breath
Demands that higher land
Where death has met its death,

And that is the secret service
Of those whose hearts are right,
Who seek with love and candles
For knowledge with delight.

​There are always people
Willing to concede
Themselves to truth and goodness.
But they lack drive, indeed,

Until they meet coarse brutes
Whose will is harsh and strong.
And then their own deep will
Rumbles its deep-scored song.

And when all men are joined,
They see the light of peace
Knocking on faith's door,
Carrying holiness in its valise.

​There are some people
For whom every number is seven.
And yet in the sacred incense
They add one ingredient so that there are eleven.

So that they can enter into this world
As in a pair of overalls
And then they go upstairs,
Dragging shoppers from the malls.

And sometimes they err
And they think they’re not as strong
As they really are. But they
Turn about and come along,

And the world is as marvelous
As a desert suffused in LSD,
Because it has danced in the wake
Of their synchronicity.

​The freedom of thought,
I mean, when it is real,
Is the light shining through
An old movie reel,

In other words, the light
Of the world, bright as a cymbal,
Divided from darkness,
More real than a symbol,

Of the destruction of thought,
An eternal night, a land-mined
Field, a roaming of beasts
Across a ruined mind,

The light of the world
Is the promise of morning,
Its appearance almost one
With the babble of mourning,

One reflects light
Of the ever-refracting more,
One sinks into the deceptive
Quagmire of the moor. 

​My mind is sinking (like
A bathyscaphe)into God’s great
Wisdom and attention.
Its ballast is a weight

Of justice (gold) and
Its buoyant air is charity
(Silver). What is law?
I am afraid of its severity,

As much as my mind can bear
And my imagination see.
And on this platforms rests 
The light of love. What temerity!

I have lived it. It has traveled
Through the rivers of my veins.
And all the bitter is made sweet,
With doubled light upon the chalk-white lanes.

This here body (even if
Tightening the belt doesn’t disguise
Its wobbly center) and its circumscribed
Power (the squint in the eyes),

Contains, implicitly,
Flares of light bright as
The sky, and they rise, they
Soar, balloons of helium gas,

When we here stagger and
Awaken, and these lights add
Strength to the brightness 
of the sky, a vibratory glad.

​There is a world that is so large
(It is not built of sticks
Like a seashore nest),
It fills itself. It needs no prefix.

It needs no study, it needs no
Preparation or label
(Perhaps it is a nest,
Perhaps light behind a fable).

All learning, warmth and kindness
Prepare us for the boulevards
Of that world, for its skies,
Its words, its camelopards.

We are walls, and all
Our preparation strips the paint,
Those dark and uncouth layers
That spattered on our windows in constraint

Of light that propagates,
That blazes through the scattered dew,
That flares across the wheat and sod,
Beneath the stork’s eye point of view.

 ​Thinking about faith, thinking
About God, thinking about
Soulful roads (in Peru alongside
The New Year River), with gout

Hobbling to fulfill soulful
Deeds, leads to shouldering
The yoke of heaven (that’s 
A lot of stars, smoldering

Nebulae, fretful tachyons).
It’s a little hard in the quark,
Even bitter, in the cosmic wind
Propagating through the dark.

Let us sweeten it by arranging
Our most refined senses
And our stellar ideas,
Brilliant, kind intelligences,

Until the word of God becomes
A lozenge sweet and pleasant
To the soul (or springing
Like a thrumming pheasant

From the road), this
Sweetmeat born from the core
Of the blazing stars, from
The inner corridor,

From the patterns they create,
Their waves of energy, 
Their points of light that shine 
As words, and blink their ABC.

​We refine our praise until
It is not dark or weak,
An impostor or a fool,
Or a lustful antique,
 
But it stands within the circle
Demanded from within, demanded
By the scrubbed light of the soul
When she is free and candid.
 
That is the entire Torah, from
A to Z. And if the thorns
Are missing, if the handles are torn,
Then the color is drained from the hawthorns.
 
The mind floats up like
A weather balloon, it spreads
Its sensors, and we see
Patterns of weather in cumulus shreds.
 
Prayer begins from the smallest need.
When we fill it without measure
From the head of the river,
It rises to its source of pleasure.
 
Every day it is in the marmot,
Though hidden; in the human, revealed.
Its light bursts like asters
For souls in the field,
 
A light that shines so strongly
That no shadow remains,
But the soil and grass blaze
Across the hills and plains.
 
 

​Oh how I’ve come down
In the world. And these scraps
Of mud-smeared ruby and jade
Stick to me, to each synapse,

And I hose them off, for
Decades (at least!), still,
Because they clung to my skin,
To my soul and will,

They gain, they are
Already, somewhat, rising,
They are ready to be
Clean, (which is not surprising,

Because they have clung
To the soul made in the form—)
If not today, then, if not
In this home, in another dorm,

Rising and now in a form
That shines, that can cling
To the universe’s eternal
Birds that praise, that sing,

That sing the splendor
Of the crown that—we know
And we can’t know—(but
If my hair were white as snow,

Perhaps I would be there
As it rose.) Yes, 
It rises, yes, it sparkles
Till the meadows opalesce.