Saturday, June 27, 2009

O World




"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
After a month of rain, the meditation garden finally received some attention during yesterday's sunny afternoon. Some plants grew beyond their alloted territory, others perished in puddles. I weeded, replanted, and tried to sweep the muddy bricks, only to have it rain again last night.
I saw the garden's rain-sodden evolution differently when I returned to it this morning and found it refreshed. The birds agreed and I was reminded of an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem which I found on St John the Divine's Poet's Corner:

O world, I cannot hold thee
close enough!

Thy winds,
thy wide grey skies!

Thy mists that roll and rise!

Thy woods, this autumn day,
that ache and sag

And all but cry with color!
That gaunt crag

To crush! To lift the lean of
that black bluff!

World, World, I cannot get
thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory
in it all,

But never knew I this;

Here such a passion is

As stretcheth me apart.
Lord, I do fear

Thou'st made the world too
beautiful this year.

My soul is all but out of me,
let fall

no burning leaf; prithee,
let no bird call.