​If you know that you
Are less than God, then you
Are wise, your mind is a
Rabbit that leaps forward, a billet-doux

To train wheels and passion flowers,
You see the sap rising, you
Are a boat rocking slightly 
On the waves; but fall through,

Lie in an opium stupor, scuttle
Beneath the trailing arm, huddle
In a hole in a cracked wall.
The sun shines above the muddle,

Its light is more than any eye
Can bear, the transparent water
Shimmers high above the hermit crab,
It is the light of the tiara of the daughter,

The eye of the common myna,
Which sees the life that streams,
That surges, the bright surprise
With which the wheat field teems.

​The king breaks through a fence
To create his own path.
He breaks down Newton’s wall
And scribbles a new math.

The ruins are restored by
A man who knows ruins, (he was born
That way) and the trick to pick
A rose is to avoid the thorn.

Sometimes everything crashes
Until the smoke billows out
To the road, until the throat
Is choked and cannot shout,

But the white-faced man
Will climb out of the crevasse,
Everyone who sought beauty
On the crashed mountain pass,

Who wanted more than
What they knew they wanted, who
Died in their sleep and frustration,
“Gather my lovers to

Me, who were, in the end,
Faithful.” Once, they had leaped
And died, now they stride
Where until now we have creeped,

And even if, the second time,
We weren’t high enough, the third
Time, the people of the aleph,
The limbs that had been injured,

The sapling that was pulled out
Of the ground will be replanted,
The homes will spread upon the hills,
Permission will be granted

To swear in the living name
Of the just and the fair, and
Those who had been as far 
As Stanford, in quicksand,

Will build a stone home. Even
They will be guides and singers
States the master beyond math
Whose every speech lingers.

​The glinting flames of water surge
And break the banks, waves surge
From outside and from inside and
Swirl and clash and merge.

The molecules that life depends upon
Blur, the reverberating feelings
Blast waves pulsing through the banks,
The banks crumble, and then healings,

Halos, surround the sand, cisterns,
Driving rain, the desert town
Is rebuilt, a new town with an
Old glow, a silver crown.

​The whole world is in a sandwich,
It is narrow but it is tall,
On the inside it is vast,
So that the radiant songs pall

Of the inner forest with its 
Burled trees, with its black-
Eyed bluebirds, spreading
Across mountains, on the back

Of hills. Sometimes a bear trap
Snaps, the bear roras and drops
His head. Then the lights of
Love and awe, in the copse

The psychedelic passiflora
Bunched shrubs across the dun
Trunks of dim trees, the wind
Stirs, and gilds the web spun,

And the water trickling down
The hillside soaks the crinkling
Lichen, the moss grows soft

​It is all revealed, in a sense,
Everything permissible, everything
That swings from thought to thought,
All the balls of hail that ping

And bounce upon the sidewalk,
All the freewheeling, the canvases,
All of it is free, from Houston Street
To Salsbury, the drinks that fizz,

The soul picks up its leather 
Luggage, it’s standing at the top
Of a hill with a long scarf
And no way that it can drop,

But—it still hasn’t found
A house to live in, it still
Hasn’t found a tower, it
Cannot yet cross the sill

And take the car, it still
Cannot travel thoughout
The length and breadth of the mind
And history, inside and out.

​From the top of the cosmos,
From the checkerboard where time
Goes forwards and backwards,
From the top of the paradigm,

From the granite fathers
Of the world, an inheritance
Of freedom, of service 
Of vast circumference,

Revealing the heart, the veins
And arteries, crystal lights
And cement sidewalks, that snaps
Holy photographs, bright insights,

Of every fact, of every form
Of life, of every imagery
Of time, of all the flicking
Frames of syzygy.

​If we are stunned by a conception
So large that the entire
Universe cannot fit inside, 
Let our heart not crackle with fire.

If shafts of light blur our sight,
So that the colors are stained
And dim, out-of-focus threads
Of flame hover before us, veined,

That is the start of the weaving
Of clear lights, of lines
Rich with life, strong
Boulders, rain-dropping pines.

With that, we stride with vigor, and
We find ourselves amidst green
Shadows of trees, we go up
A mountain to where a keen

Wind skirts the edge between
Being and no being, we come
To a place space ceases to matter,
The patter of numbers creates no sum,

There is delight, the world
Is Rembrandt and van Gogh,
The mansion doors swing open,
Every space is emptied of imbroglio.

The strength of our song will rise,
The dew hanging in the shrubs
Will whisper, we will hear secrets,
The formulas of heaven and cubs’

Mewls, and palisades that zigzag
On the cliffs, the river courses
And it surges, we watch it on the bridge,
It rushes with the strength of horses.

​It gets in your bones, it seems
So high-falutin’ but it gets
In your bones; it gets in your
Walk, it sets aside regrets;

It gets in your thoughts, in
The rooms and the roads, in
The crampons and belaying ropes;
In going to get aspirin;

In seeing the ground of being
The history of volcanoes in a slab
Of stone; in these all, the light
That soaks through the drab.

Otherwise, you are seized up,
The sidewalk is angled, the air
Is damp, the sky lowers,
Everything is shoddy, a porch chair,

A glass ornament, an overweight
Cat, just a street, a fence,
Orange flowers, cars sliding,
A brooding of inconsequence,

You cannot, inside yourself,
Soar, you cannot, inside
Yourself, live, you yearn
For the crash and sliding of the tide.

​If we don’t reveal—through a
Return to you not because
We are afraid, not because we
Seek applause, or follow laws;

Through a faith that meets you
In the park, that sights you
Where the traffic swells, where
In the dark smoke blights you;

In the orchard, where the showy
Apples keep their seeds concealed,
In the field, where puffballs
Free their spores; or a yield

Of golden sparks in a sifting pan;
Of ore shoots and hidden veins--
The light that hovers, not white,
But not not-white, then hurricanes

Strap the coast, drive mud upon
The trunks, drive down the hawks,
Strip the maples and hollyhocks,
Batter and flatten the wheat stalks,

The osprey staggers, its wing dragging,
The sky, its natural home, is gray,
Is shattering with pellets of rain,
Till at night it sees the Milky Way.

​The first thought requires
No adjustment—the thought of how
The cosmos ought to be--
The spin ice and the Holstein cow,

Because, you understand,
If you do something right,
You don’t have to change
Your mind. That isn’t so bright

To create a house and then seek
Variances. But once the house
Was built and the children 
Playing, laundry drying, one spouse

Saying, “Dear, I think we need
To talk,” the power of their life
Stretches, pulses, causes 
Re-evaluations, the knife

On the mantel could hurt someone,
The cat seeks a chaise longue
To trim its nails, the dripping
Trail of a soapy sponge,

Then you cry, Oh Architect!
I know I don’t deserve it,
But please come back, adjust
This home, somehow I don’t fit.

To exist, to fit right there,
Right there in the plans,
Is sweet, is approved,
Attested to by artisans,

Fitting into the deep structure,
The force of tau or quark or color,
That justifies its nature
A sweet, tornadoing cruller.